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UNITED STATES Of AMEEIOA. 





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Compaments of Dr. mm, Sewarb Webb 



ADDRESSES 



MADE AT THK KANQUET, GIVEN TO THE OFFICERS ANM MFMBERS OF THl 



National Society 



30NS of the /American I^eyolution 



REPRESENTING THE DIFFERENT STATE SOCIETIES OF 
THAT NAME THROUGHOUT THE UNION, 



Dr. U/illiam Seu/ard U/ebb, 

IN 

NEW YORK, MARCH ist, 1890. 

1890 



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PRESS OF 

THE NEW YORK PRINTING COMPANY 

536-538 PEARL STREET 



INSIGNIA, 



OF THE SOCIETY OF THE 



SONS (3F THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 





SEAL OK THE NATIONAL SOCIETY, 
SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 



Table of Contents. 



Title Page, ........ I 

Insignia, ........ Ill 

Seal, ......... V 

Introductory, ....... 9 

Address of Welcome by President-General William Seward 

Webb, . . . . . . . . IL 

Address, "The Society and its Objects," by Judge Lucius P. 

Deming, of Connecticut, . . . . . 13 

Address, by Hon. Chauncey M. Depew of New York, . . 23 

Rev. Edward Everett Hale of Massachusetts, . 29 

Rev. D. C. Kelly of Tennessee, . . . 35 

Captain Charles King of Wisconsin, . . 39 

John C. Calhoun, President of the Southern 

Society of New York, ..... 42 

Col. Ethan Allen of New York, ... 46 

Hon. Warner Miller of New York, . . .48 

Major J. C. Kinney of Connecticut, . . 52 

Hon. George G. Benedict of Vermont, . . 55 

Gen. J. G. McCullough of Vermont, . . 58 

J. W. Buchanan of Kentucky, . . .61 

Rev. Wm. R. Parsons of Ohio, ... 63 



LETTERS. 

PAGE. 

Letter of Hon. Edmond de Lafayette, Senateur de la Rebublic 

Francaise, . . . . . . .69 

Hon. Redfield Proctor, .... 69 

Hon. W. H. English, . . . . .70 

Hon. Simon B. Buckner, Governor of Kentucky, . 71 

Hon. George F. Edmunds, . . . . .73 

Gen. George Crook, ..... 78 

Hon. Robert L . Taylor, Governor of Tennessee, . 74 

Hon. Wayne McVeagh, ..... 74 

Hon. W. p. Dillingham, Governor of Vermont, . . 75 

Hon. Stewart L. Woodford, .... 76 

CONSTITUTION, 77 



INTRODUCTORY. 




OON after assuming tlie presidency of the 
National Society of the Sons of the American 
Revolution, believing that it would be to the 
benefit of the Society, if its widely scattered 
officers and most active members could be 
brought together, become personally acquainted 
with each other and compare notes, thus in- 
'creasing the spirit of progress and emulation. Dr. William 
Seward Webb issued invitations to a banquet at Delmonico's, 
in New York City, on March 1st, 1890, to the officers and 
members of the Society of the Sons of the American Revo- 
lution, in the States in which permanent organizations 
existed. Upwards of one hundred sat down to the banquet 
and representatives from nearly every one of the twenty- 
three State Societies were present. Judge Lucius P. Deming, 
the first President of the National Society, acted as toast-mas- 
ter. The addresses made on this occasion and some letters 
received at this time, will be interesting additions to the 
literature of the Society and of value in the future. They 



10 

have, therefore, been collected and are i^resented herewith^ 
together with a copy of the constitution, and engra\dngs of 
the seal, insignia of the Society, etc. 

ISTo attempt has been made to amplify the matter included 
herein. The addresses are simply given in the order in which 
they were delivered on that occasion, with the simple j)urpose 
of preserving the thoughts and opinions of some of our promi- 
nent men on the opportunities and work of our Society, and 
have been published by direction of the President-General, 
Dr. William Seward Webb. 

New York, April 15th, 1800. 




ADDRESS BY 

WriJ^I^lJ^WL SKWARD WEBB. 

President-General Webb called tbe meeting to order for tlie 
oratorical part of tlie exercises soon after 9 o'clock. As lie 
rose to speak lie was tumiiltuously applauded, and was not 
permitted to proceed until after an unmistakable expression 
of the hearty and loyal support of the representatives of tlie 
S. A. R. of the United States. Pausing until the house had 
been restored to order, he said : 

It gives me pleasure to welcome you all here this evening; 
and I desire to extend my thanks to you, my guests from tho 
South and West, who have done me the honor to come so 
many miles to be present this evening. Our society, as you all 
well know, is yet in its infancy — ^hardly started in its career. 
Three months ago, we were organized in but twelve States ; 
to-day, in nearly thirty ; and I hope before many months, that 
we shall have a society in every State and Territory in the 
Union. My object in asking you all here this evening is, not 
only that I may have the privilege and pleasure of greeting 
you all, and have you hear of the good work already done, 
and to be done in the future, but that you, gentlemen, repre- 
senting societies in different States in the Union, may be able 
to meet one another and become better acquainted. 

I believe that these associations in the different States will 
be fruitful of great good to our American country in the 



12 

future, and will serve to keep alive in our minds tlie deeds of 
our forefathers of '76. As our friend, the President of the 
Michigan Society, truly says, "the more recent and tragic 
events of the War of the Rebellion have, to a very consider- 
able extent, driven from the minds of Americans the great 
lessons of the War for Independence ; but no thinking man 
can read the history of our country at that time, without see- 
ing that there was laid the foundation upon which the happi- 
ness, strength and prosperity of our country must always 
■exist." 

There are those here to-night who will talk to you of our 
society's future, and how we must strive to keep bright, not 
to our children (who, as the sons of men interested in this 
great subject, will, as a matter of course, have that sentiment 
concerning the great deeds of the men of '70 which we our- 
selves have), but to our friends and fellow-citizens of to-day, 
the trials and hardships suffered by our fathers, grandfathers 
and great grandfathers in their great struggle for the inde- 
pendence of this country, the blessings and fruits of which we 
are now enjoying, 

I now take pleasure in introducing to you the first Presi- 
dent of the National Society, the Hon. Lucius P. Deming, of 
JsTew Haven, who will speak of "The Society and its Objects." 



^ 



ADDRESS BY 
JUDOK LUCIUS F». DE^IVEINO. 



"the society and its objects." 

Mr. President and GenUemen : You have done me a great 
honor by calling upon me and referring to me as the first 
President of the National Society of Sons of the American 
Revolution, I feel proud of that title, and of the society 
"which has grown up since the National Society was organized 
on April 30th, 1889. At that time there were but few soci- 
eties thoroughly organized and in working order. 

In 1876, on July 4th, out in California, an inspiration 
came to the editor of the *' Alta-California" — and I am 
inclined to think inspirations always come to editors ; they 
seem to know everything and think of everything. At least, 
it came to him, and out of his thought grew the first society, 
The California Society of Sons of Revolutionary Sires, and 
out of that has grown all the societies of the same or similar 
name. Since then we have seen the birth of twenty-six soci- 
eties in twenty-six different States, all organized for the great 
work, which is to revive the memories and quicken the love 
of Americans for America. 

I am glad to meet so many representative gentlemen here 
to-night. I regret that we have no personal representative 
from that first society. I have the pleasure, however, of read- 
ing a letter from the representative of that society, who would 
be with us this evening, had he not been detained by circum- 
stances beyond his control. 



14 

"WisCASSET, Feb. 21st, 1890. 
Hon. William Seivard Webb, New York: 

Dear Sir : — I am pleased to acknowledge the receipt of an invi- 
tation to a dinner to be given by you at Delmonico's, in New York, 
on March the 1st, to the representatives and members of the State 
Societies of the Sons of the American Revolution. 

I regret exceedingly that I am unable to be present on an occa- 
sion of so great interest, but the inclement season and a partial 
recovery from a severe illness must be my excuse. In your pub- 
lished account of the social reunion of the S. A. R. at your residence 
on December 7th, 1889, I Avas pleased and gratified thab notice and 
credit was given of the formation of the first society of the kind, in 
California, in our centennial year, 1876. The society was then just 
organized and made its first public appearance in the procession of 
the City celebration of San Francisco, on July 4th of that year. 
After marching over the prescribed route, cheered and animated by 
the special acclamations of the people along the line, our little band 
of about one hundred members debouched from the main body, and 
marched to their own hall with music of fife and driun, where a 
poem on Paul Jones was delivered by C. H. Denison, and an oration 
by C. H. Damron, Esq. Great enthusiasm was shown throughout 
the day, and from that time the society grew slowly but steadily, 
although its usefulness was curtailed because it had no correspond- 
ing organizations in sister States. To Gen. A. M. Wmn and Col. A. 
S. Hubbard belong the special honor for the inception and organiza- 
tion of that society; and to the latter, more than to any other man, 
should be given honor for perseverance in holding the society 
together for seven years through discouragements that threatened to 
overwhelm it. 

At that time — 1876 — the pioneers of California were beginning to 
show marks of age; their heads wore the white crown of the Sierras; 
time had made permanent the stoop of the gold seeker, and they 
began to realize that the day was not distant when the last golden 
sand would for them drop from the hour-glass. Then came the 
thought of the splendid record they had made in adding to our 
galaxy of States another star, and by an easy transition the great 
work of their ancestors passed in review before them. Many of the 
men of '49 had brought their families and all their ancestral relics 
and documents to their new home on the Pacific, and they deter- 
mined that some way to preserve those precious and valuable docu- 



15 

inents must be provided, so that the fame of their revolutionary- 
fathers should be perpetuated through future generations. Such were 
the motives that inspired the men who formed the California Society 
on July 4th, 1876 ; and I feel sure that similar motives actuate the 
descendants of the men of the Revolution now. A recent letter from 
Col. A. S. Hubbard, now President of the California Society, desires 
me to respond for California at this dianer, and I should with pleas- 
ure do so if I could he present. Will you be good enough to con- 
sider this brief history of the formation of that society in the light 
of such a response, and accept it as a contribution from the Pacific 
coast. 

California sends you a greeting dearer to her than her gold, and a 
prediction that the influence of the Sons of the American Revolution 
will hasten the day when the principles for which our fathers fought, 
and for which we still contend, shall prevail throughout the whole 
earth. 

Very truly yours, 

Charles H. Denison, 
Vice-President-General S. A. R. for Maine." 

I have further letters, Mr. President, from gentlemen rep- 
resenting societies in different parts of our country, each of 
which would be interesting, both by reason of locality and 
composition. I have one from the Hon. J. H. Shinn, of the 
Arkansas Society, and another from the Hon. H. K. Slayton, 
of the New Hampshire Society, and many others, each regret- 
ting his inability to be with us, but expressing his best wishes 
that this evening's entertainment may be an enjoyable one, 
and that the result may be for good to all Societies of Sons of 
the American Revolution. We regret the absence of our 
friends. It would be gratifying to us if every Society organ- 
ized since the California Society could be represented here 
this evening. We send them our best wishes for the pros- 
perity and growth of the societies in their several States. 

I sometimes think, Mr. President, that the earth is yet full 
of the teeth of the mythical dragon, and that, when the needs 
of men require it, they develop into societies and organiza- 
tions, armed and equipped for the defense of threatened 
rights, for the awakening of dormant energies, for the unifi- 



16 

cation of nations, and the elevation of struggling peoples. I 
fully believe that every combination and every organization 
— and I care not whether it is called lodge, society or union, 
trust or government — is working out the great problems of 
progress, the result of which will be strong government with- 
out oppression, large liberty without license, unity without 
sectional jealousy, and an elevation of the masses to as high a 
degree of comfort and happiness as novelists ever dreamed of. 

The Society of Sons of the American Revolution was born 
in the fullness of time and because there was need for just 
such a society to revive old memories, to bind together seem- 
ingly discordant elements, and to excite such pride in purely 
American institutions and such desire for national advance- 
ment and enlargement, as to cause jealousy to hide in the 
caves of forgetfulness, and sectionalism to develop into ultra- 
nationalism. There has been some misconception in regard 
to the position and work of the National Society of Sons of 
the American Revolution. Its special work has been con- 
founded with the work of State societies. The peculiar work 
of the two is as different as the National government is differ- 
ent from the State government. The one touches the indi- 
vidual, and the other touches the community. So, while the 
State societies collect records and documents, and mark local 
ruins, and erect monuments to commemorate local events, the 
National Society occupies a larger field and endeavors to influ- 
ence the sentiment of the nation, and direct that sentiment to 
matters of national importance. The National Society points 
the way and directs the course of action, and the State soci- 
eties carry the work to completion; and in this work, to 
insure the largest success, there must be neither politics nor 
sectarianism, nor any effort for personal aggrandizement. 

You have seen fit, Mr. President, to assign to me the senti- 
ment " The Sons of the American Revolution ; its objects and 
prospects," and I trust you will bear with me while I attempt 
to say something upon this important subject. 

As I have said, the first State Society of this character, so 
far as I am aware, was organized in California, and its 



17 

objects as stated were "To unite the descendants of Revolu- 
tionary patriots ; to perpetuate the memory of those who took 
part in the American Revolution ; to maintain the indepen- 
dence of the United States of America, and to keep alive that 
spirit of patriotism that warmed the hearts of our fathers 
through their fearful struggle for individual and national 
liberty." It is strange that on the far Pacific coast, in a land 
which was hardly known to exist by the men of the Revolu- 
tion, a hundred years after the smoke of battle had lifted from 
the hills of Boston, and the rattle of musketry had ceased at 
Yorktown, the great grandsons of the men who fought those 
battles should meet and organize a society to rescue the names 
and the acts of their ancestors from oblivion. Yet, such was 
the fact and our National Society is the outcome and result of 
that first society in California, organized July 4th, 1876. A 
little more than a century has passed since the colonies, as in- 
dependent republics, organized as one republic. As we look 
along the highway which the Century has constructed, and 
over which our Nation has come, we find it marked by statues 
and monumental shafts, bearing known and illustrious names, 
and other shafts whispering of names unknown. As we look 
upon either side of this highway, we see unnumbered fields 
stained with blood from bruised feet and slashed bodies, but 
the carved monuments and lettered stones tell of the battles 
fought and the victories won upon them. We look upon 
countless library shelves, and tomes beyond our numbering 
tell in story and in song of Lexington and Bunker Hill, of 
Red Bank and Trenton and Yorktown ; and the names of the 
sons of Connecticut and Massachusetts, Carolina and Vermont, 
New Jersey and Virginia crowd each other in the same col- 
umn. As we look upon these carved monuments and lettered 
stones and read the story and the song, a feeling comes into 
our hearts that every spot has been marked, that every story 
has been told, and that a monument has been reared to every 
brave man who fell. If this has all been done, then it is true, 
the work of our society is indeed limited. But, has the work 
all been done ? Have the stories and histories all been writ- 



18 

ten ? Can we repeat the names of tlie heroes who fought and 
fell? Do we know the graves among the tangled grass in 
ivhich the unnamed dead are buried ? If there is a battle- 
field of the Revolution unmarked ; if there is a moss-grown 
historic ruin to be preserved ; if there is an untold story to be 
written, or a monument to some hero still to be reared, then 
there is work for our state societies to do ; there are reasons 
why they should exist. It is true that libraries contain vol- 
umes without number telling over and over again the story of 
the Revolutionary struggle ; but it is also true that there are 
unwritten histories hid away in attics and closets and trunks 
which have never seen the light of publicity, but which tell 
stories of personal heroism and individual suffering more 
thrilling than has ever been written ; and unless these almost 
forgotten threads of the great struggle are soon gathered 
uj) they will be lost forever. It is true that on battle-fields 
and in public places are many monuments bearing the names 
of brave men who fought and died in defense of liberty; but, 
€ven in the States of old New England, there are scores and 
hundreds now living who have forgotten that their fathers 
took part in that struggle, and that they are heirs to a part of 
the glory which that struggle brought to this nation and to 
the world. They know, perhaps, that your father was an 
■officer in the Revolution, but the names of their fathers, 
privates, do not appear in bronze or stone, and their names 
and deeds have been forgotten. It is the work of our State 
societies to quicken the memory and resurrect from obli\don 
the names of these forgotten fighters in a holy cause, and to 
create in the hearts of the Sons of the Revolution a pride in 
their ancestral blood and ancestral name, and a desire to know 
something more of their lineage and descent than they have 
known. American aristocracy is a thing for "laughter, 
fleers and jeers " in its ordinary acceptation; but blood which 
has flowed in an unadulterated line from men of the Revolu- 
tion to me is a thing of which to boast, even if my ancestor 
did fight in the ranks and tramp barefooted through the 
snows and storms from Lexington to Valley Forge. William 



19 

iihe Conqueror was the source of no more honorable line than 
that friend of Washington, Gen. Samuel Blatchley Webb, the 
ancestor of our worthy President, or the farmer, Israel Put- 
nam, or the spy, Nathan Hale. 

I have referred to what may be considered the special 
work of State societies. For one moment let me refer to 
some of the distinctive lines of work for the National Society ; 
and, first, as I understand, its object is to awaken — to re- 
create, if you please — a distinctively American sentiment in 
favor of a distinctively American system of government ; to 
revive the sentiment which existed when Massachusetts and 
Carolina stood foot to foot, knee to knee, and shoulder to 
shoulder in the struggle for independence; and when Han- 
<;ock of Massachusetts, Henry of Virginia, Trumbull of Con- 
necticut, and Rutledge of South Carolina were laboring and 
fighting for the establishment of the independence of their 
common country. In those days, the men who made the 
United States of America also made the laws by which those 
States were governed. As we compare the times then and 
now, how can we but exclaim, "How are the mighty fallen, 
and to what low estate have they come ! " 

In my experience I have seen men stand up in court and 
declare through an interpreter their intention to become 
American citizens ; I have seen the same men a little later prove 
their right to citizenship, by right of residence, through an in- 
terpreter ; have listened as the interpreter read to them the cer- 
tificate which notified and informed them of their citizenship ; 
and then have seen the same men led before the selectmen, 
and have heard them read a line from the Constitution trans- 
lated into a foreign language expressly for them, and so 
become electors and possible legislators, fully competent, 
legally, to make our laws for us and to sit in our halls of leg- 
islation, although they could liot speak our language nor com- 
prehend our laws, and were absolutely ignorant of our system 
of government. We welcome to our shores the intelligent 
and the virtuous. We gladly welcome to full citizenship all 
who, by study of our laws and affiliation with our people. 



20 

•understand our complex system of government and comj)re- 
liend our liberal Constitution and by tbeir acts and education 
show themselves worthy of the trust of citizenship. But we 
are afraid of the anarchist and the socialist, and we know 
that our institutions are not safe with anarchism and social- 
ism and ignorance at the helm of the ship of state. Speed 
the time, and we, as Sons of the American Revolution, will 
be missionaries in the cause, when American citizenship is 
limited to those who, by birth or education, are in sympathy 
with us; and when this object is accomplished, then will 
one object of our National Society be accomplished, and this 
object can only be reached by means of education. 

I cannot speak for the South, but in the North it is a cause 
of surprise how little is known of our immediate ancestors, 
how ignorant we are of the events which led to and culmin- 
ated in the Revolution, and how we have forgotten the very 
names of the men who took important and prominent jDarts in 
laying the foundation of our Government. In order to enter 
the law school connected with one of our large universities, it 
is necessary to pass a preliminary examination. One ques- 
tion asked a would-be student in this law department was 
this : ' ' Give the name of some high officer of the Revolution, 
who was guilty of treason, and state some fact in connection 
with this treason." And the written reply was, " I think you 
refer to Horace Greely, who attempted to sell his country to 
the enemy." 

And this is not an isolated case of rampant ignorance. 
Men have become absorbed in the race for fame, position, 
wealth and honor, have forgotten family pride, and the claims 
of patriotism and country, and have fallen into a feeling of 
false security that the country is safe, and that its institu- 
tions will take care of themselves. The time is ripe and we 
must call a halt and return to the old paths in which the 
fathers trod when every true American felt that upon his 
shoulders rested the burden of maintaining the government 
in its purity, and the laws in their integrity. Mothers mast 
again teach their infants that liberty and country are the first 



21 

things to be thought of and the last things to be forgotten ; 
and the fathers must see to it that the mile-stones along the 
highway of our country's progress are schoolhouses, and that 
over these schoolhouses shall float the American flag from the 
old liberty poles, every one of which shall be an exclamation 
point emphasizing patriotism and punctuating Americanism. 
We teach a little of everything in the common schools of our 
country, and a little American history is taught, but hardly 
sufficient to create an appetite for more, hardly enough to call 
it the alphabet of history. Patriotism is the cornerstone and 
keystone of our American institutions, and patriotism should 
be taught to every American child at all times and every- 
where, and especially in the schoolroom ; and this teaching 
should not only be by precept but by object lessons as well, 
which the eye should photograph upon the heart, and one of 
these object lessons should be the American flag, the only 
recognized emblem of the only true republic on the face of 
the earth to-day. In whatever lands its starry folds catch the 
rays of the sun, it is looked up to by struggling peoples, even 
as the weary Israelite in the wilderness looked up to the 
brazen serpent and was saved by the look, I trust the day is 
not far distant — and it is a worthy object for this National 
Society to hasten the day — when north and south, east and 
west, the schoolhouse shall occupy the corner of every high- 
way, and over every schoolhouse shall float our glorious flag, 
the stars and stripes, an object lesson for every child and 
man, and then our youth, with Webster will say, "I was 
born an American, I will live an American, I shall die an 
American." 

But, Mr. President, I have already occuj)ied too much 
time, and with a word I close. As I look back over the cen- 
tury now ended I seem to see our country as a person, and I 
hear it confessing, " The mistakes of my life have been many, 
the sins of my life have been more ;" but, as I look into the 
future a brighter picture of glorious progress opens before 
me. Societies of the Sons of the American Revolution have 
now been organized in twenty-six States. The National Society 



22 

lias "been organized by delegates elected by them, and as a 
society it is already creating public opinion in favor of mark- 
ing historic places and preserving historic documents. It is 
taking hold of patriotic enterprises and pushing them to com- 
pletion ; it is awakening renewed interest in the celebration 
of patriotic events, the observance of historic days; and, 
more than all, it is enkindling a new and deeper love of coun- 
try among all classes and in all sections of the Republic, and 
is fanning to a brighter flame the smouldering fires of love 
for and devotion to distinctly American laws and American 
institutions. In this work the South has clasped hands with 
the North with a fervor unknown since the stirring times of 
'76 ; and the East and the West have joined in a new compact 
for the promotion of these grand objects; and when they are 
fully realized, then, indeed, will our country be one country, 
our desire for its enlargement will be truly national, and in 
this work the North and South, the East and West can 
unitedly engage without jealousy and without strife, save 
that noble strife which actuated the fathers whose sons we are. 
Mr. President, we are both fortunate to-night and unfor- 
tunate. As I look around these tables I see them bordered 
and fringed with gentlemen from all parts of the country, 
and each of commanding ability, noted for their eloquence 
and learning in the halls of education and legislation, and the 
difficulty is to know upon whom to call to occupy the hour 
which we shall spend together this evening. There is one 
gentleman, however — I will take the liberty of calling him 
first — ^and I need not mention his name, for it is a household 
word North and South, East and West ; a name synonymous 
with the noblest type of American citizen ; a gentleman whose 
friends are confined to no party and to no section, but 
wherever they are they look to him as their champion and 
standard-bearer, and fondly anticipate the time when, instead 
of occupying the position of president of a railroad, he shall 
occupy the higher position of President of this great Repub- 
lic. ^ I have the pleasure of introducing to you the Hon. 
Chauncey M. Depew of New York. 



ADDRESS BY 



HON. CHAUrsTCKY IM. DKF»KW. 



"soldiers of the revolution." 

Gentlemen : — I am very glad to find that there is one sub- 
ject on which the Sons of the American Revolution are united. 
I am quite willing to bear the responsibility which has been 
imposed upon me by the gentleman who has just taken his 
seat — until the National Convention meets, and then it will 
be discovered that there are several persons in that conven- 
tion who have different views — and those views, I guess, will 
prevail. 

It is an historical fact, interesting to us, that when the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence had appended 
their signatures to that immortal document, those signatures 
with which we are all so familiar, the wit of the convention 
said, *' We will all hang together ;" but when each of us, as 
we entered this hall to-night, appended his signature on the 
outside at the hat counter, I felt that we were veritable 
descendants of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
though we incurred none of the perils of our ancestors. The 
only peril which we incurred was that we should all dine 
together. 

It is an extraordinary thing that a hundred and seven 
years after the close of the Revolutionary War, there should 
be, for the first time, a national society formed to preserve 
the memory of the incidents and of the heroes of that great 
event. We differ from all nationalities in this respect. It is 



24 

ilie most superb tribute to the magnificent pace of our pro- 
gress and to the volcanic character of our development, that, 
for one hundred and seven years, we have forgotten the 
events of our origin and the men to whom we are indebted. 
"We come from races which are peculiar for their reverence 
for the past and for their worship of their heroes. The Teu- 
tonic, the Scandinavian, the Celtic, the French and the Latin 
races are remarkable for the manner in which they celebrate 
every trifling incident and every heroic event connected with 
their establishment as a race, their recognition as a people 
and their creation as a nation. The French go back to their 
early kings. The Teuton goes back to the chiefs who repelled 
the Roman invasion. The Scandinavian grows eloquent in 
song and heroic epic upon the vikings who ruled the sea. The 
Celt talks of the chiefs, who, in a traditionary period, were 
magnificent beyond anything of which we have record in our 
own time. It seems to establish the sentiment that patriot- 
ism is made up of superstition and imagination, and that we 
are the most patriotic people in the world, without a trace of 
superstition and scarcely the semblance of imagination. All 
other races, all other peoples, all other nationalities, deify the 
heroes of their origin. We, on the other hand, look back with 
mortification to the sux)erstitions which liung the witch, with 
contemjjt at the superstition which pursued with bigoted \dn- 
dictiveness opposite creeds, and at the men of the Revolution 
with a horizontal view of their virtues and of their deficien- 
cies, unequalled in the history of great peoples. And yet I 
take it, that, without superstition, and without imagination, 
there is no nationality that more thoroughly appreciates pre- 
cisely what were the difficulties of their origin and precisely 
what it accomplished, than ours. 

It is an extraordinary thing to look at the development of 
the Revolutionary soldier. For the first few years after the 
close of the Revolutionary War, he was a tramp whom the 
whole country feared. While he had been for seven years in 
the field, the country behind him had been earning a living 
and securing the means of a moderate competence. The 



25 

Nation itself, in its Treasury was bankrupt, and the fear was 
that, attacking first a bankrupt Treasury, he might, in order 
to secure that to which he was legitimately entitled as the 
hero who had made liberty possible to the people behind him, 
claim his rights. It is his glory that he preferred to be a 
tramp to being a revolutionist. During long years, having in 
the habits of the camp lost the ability to compete in the field 
of labor, having in the exigencies of the field exhausted his 
substance, for long years he was an object of mingled pity, 
contempt and fear to the people of this country. 

Then came his second development. The country slowly, 
very slowly, rose as it grew more prosperous to a recognition 
of his unequalled services, of his unsurpassed and unequalled 
sacrifice, and recognized him by a pension so small that, com- 
paring the pension and his patriotism, the one became 
infinitesimal and the other infinite. 

Then came his third stage. By that time the patriotism 
of the country had developed into a condition where it was a 
glorious thing to celebrate the events of which he had been 
the creator ; and, while it was not popular to pay the creator, 
the event could not be celebrated without his presence. So 
that the 4th of July, the Bunker Hill Monument, the stones 
that were erected upon historic ground, the funerals of the 
great heroes who were passing away, all, in the localities 
w^here they occurred, brought the Revolutionary soldier to the 
front to ride in an open barouche, the first one in the proces- 
sion, to sit on the first seat in the platform, and at the ban- 
quet, in every sense, to get full. It was that period which 
■developed the best, and the best remembered evidences of 
American orators. It was that which produced that mag- 
nificent apostrophe at Bunker Hill : "Venerable men, you 
have come down to us from a former generation." It was 
that which led Edward Everett, on a famous occasion, to cause 
the old Revolutionary soldier, who had starved during the 
period until that celebration, to say to his family afterwards : 

' ' A most extraordinary man, that Mr. Everett. He came 
iiround to my house the day before the celebration and said • 



2G 

* Are yon the old Revolutioner ? ' And I said, ' I am. ' Said 
he, ' I want you to be present to sit on the platform when I 
deliver my address, and to occnpy the chair of honor, and 
when I allude to the old Revolutionary soldiers, the heroes of 
the War, I want you to arise.' When he began to speak of 
the Revolutionary soldier, troubled on account of my rheuma- 
tism, and more on account of my wounds, I got up on my 
crutches ; and no sooner had I got up, than Mr. Everett said ; 
'Sit down, sir. Sit down. It is for this generation to stand 
in the presence of such as you.' " 

The orator of to-day has no opportunity for such a pre- 
pared imjDromptu. 

But the last and most lamentable development of the 
Revolutionary soldier, as I remember him as a boy in Peeks- 
kill, was sitting around the door of the country store, waiting- 
for the hospitable invitation, which should lead to that move- 
ment of his circulation, which he got in no other way and 
which he was unable to pay for himself. The old and the 
middle-aged men had heard his stories and had pronounced 
him the phenomenal liar of the neighborliood, but to the boys 
like myself he was a veritable hero. We stood there in jack- 
ets and short breeches, and listened with bated breath while, 
with gun or crutch, as the case might be, he told how he had 
suffered at Valley Forge, how he had fought at Bunker Hill, 
how he had crossed the Delaware with Washington, how he 
had won the victory at Monmouth, and how he had seen the 
sword of Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. The skeptic 
of the neighborhood said he was a sutler in Westchester 
County, and had never been outside the neighborhood. That 
never disturbed our faith in either himself or his crutch. 
And then he had a weapon terrible in its force, keen as the 
cimeter of Saladin, touching the vital point every time and 
leaving a poison that was never eradicated. Of those who 
treated him with contempt, he said to the boys: *' See that 
man ? I knew his father ; he was a cowboy, a skinner in the 
Revolution." And born as I was, and passing my life amid 
these traditions of the neutral ground, there are names of 



27 

families whicli to-day, occupying as tlieir representatives do, 
liigh positions in tlie State and in tlie cliurcli and in literature, 
I never hear mentioned, but that the poisoned arrow of the- 
Ravolntionary soldier brings up a prejudice in my mind, 
" You are the son or the grandson of a cowboy of the Revo- 
lution.' 

And so the old soldier passed away. Then came the War 
of the Rebellion ; and the Revolutionary War, its heroes and 
its statesmen, as absolutely disappeared as if they never had 
existed. For twenty years, there was no celebration of a 
Revolutionary event, no recollection of a Revolutionary hero, 
no statement, in speech, or on occasion, of anything which 
referred to the origin of the Republic. The only recollection 
of the whole period was of Jefferson, because of a sentence in 
the Declaration of Independence; of Hamilton, because he 
stood for the nationality of the country. 

Then came the centennials ; but they were simply the pic- 
turesque celebration of an event to put it into an historical 
picture and then forget it for another hundred years. They 
meant nothing but the event and the hour. In the meantime, 
the tremendous strides, the magnificent j^rogress, the terrific 
force of the enginery of civilization and of liberty within 
this country, were taking no note of that to which every son 
of liberty and son of religion must refer, if he would move 
in true line upon the true pathway of progress and liberty, 
referring in religion to his Bible, in patriotism to the heroes 
of the Revolution and to the Declaration of Independence, 
which set him upon his march, and the Constitution, which 
crystallized his efforts. 

It is one of the happy incidents of a time of profound 
peace, a time of pleasurable union between all parts of this 
country, a time of the absence of controversy, when it is 
almost impossible to distinguish upon what we differ and 
about what we shall quarrel, that there arises once more both 
sentiment, imagination, and suj)erstition, if you please. We 
deify, as our Saxon, our Teutonic, our Celtic, and our Latin 
ancestors did, the heroes of the Revolution. We place tho 



28 

'warriors, Wasliington, Mad Anthony "Wayne, Green, Scliuy- 
ler and Putnam, wpon heroic basis, and love them as heroic 
pictures ; they stand upon pedestals, not only in the temples 
of American liberty, but in the imagination of the American 
people. We take Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, and 
'we go back to the study of the principles which the initiated ; 
and out of it we understand the glorious nationality which, 
embodied, signifies the Republic of the United States of 
America. 

Beyond the AUeghanies is the great empire then unknown, 
now the centre of political power, now the growing home of 
the culture and Americanism of the future, now the location 
of the World's Fair ; and while there is nothing in theii' terri- 
tory to arouse revolutionary recollections, while there are no 
Bunker Hills, no Monmouths, no Princetons, no Yorktowns, 
yet there is in that country, with the moving spirit of the 
Yankee people North and South, for we are all Yankees now, 
that dominant sentiment of that old American cult, that old 
American race, which creates the State, rules the State ; and 
this society, in these new commonwealths, in these new terri- 
tories, will keep alive in the academies, in the common schools, 
in their celebrations, recollections of the heroes of the past 
and the statesmen who created them. 




ADDRESS BY 
RKV. EDWARD EVEREXX HALE^. 

' ' NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. " 

Ilr. President and Gentlemen: I am not tlie fortunate 
landowner, Mr. President, who owns tlie battle-field of Con- 
cord.* He will speak to you by and by. To tell you the 
whole truth, my interest in this society was first awakened 
by an echo from Minnesota. I found that it was those people, 
who, in advance of us, had organized the Sons of the Ameri- 
can Revolution. I received a series of letters last year from 
three supervisors of education in Minnesota at the same time, 
asking our assistance, the assistance of people connected with 
education in the East in the patriotic solemnities which are 
observed there, I think, twice a year in those schools; 
observed to make them love that flag, to make them love 
these memories as a regular bit of school business — children, 
half of whom I suppose were born in Norway, in Bohemia and 
Astrachan and heaven knows where, but not in America, 
That seemed to me a very interesting thing ; and I was glad 
to inquire and glad to learn of the existence of an association 
like this, which makes it its business to preserve and protect 
such memories. 

But yesterday, Mr. President — if you will let me speak to 
you as a New Yorker — when I was visiting one of the admir- 
iible charities of this great city, I should say half a mile south 



* Judge Deming, as toast-maker, introduced the Rev. Dr. Hale as the man who 
■owns the ground at Concord upon which the Minute men assembled. 



ao 

of here and half a mile east, if you will allow me to charac- 
terize the region, where I fancy not one man or woman in 
twenty was born in America, I asked them what books they 
loaned ont in the neighborhood. They said the children were 
in there all the time borrowing books. I asked them " What 
books did they borrow ? " " They all want history; and, Mr. 
Hale, yon would be interested to know that not one of these 
boys can speak English in its purity. The word history 
to them means American history, means the life of George 
Washington, means the life of Abraham Lincoln." They 
don't want you to give them the history of their Teutonic 
ancestors or of their Celtic tribe. They want tlie history of 
the institutions which carry out and make good a system of 
government different from any other system of government 
that ever was in this world before. 

I have connected myself with this society most gladly and 
most loyally, because I believe its work of education is largely 
beyond what any of us can now state. I certainly will not 
pretend to state it. But I see all around me almost every day, 
among cultivated and intelligent ladies and gentlemen, the 
necessity of education in the American ideas, education about 
American government as distinct from feudal government 
and arbitrary government and absolute government, and all 
the other kinds. American government is distinct, as I said 
before, from any government that ever was in the world. 
Now I have had a lady of the highest distinction, of the best 
American blood, of the best training, of high reputation, ask 
me what was the difference between a United States Senator 
and a United States Representative. That woman knew the 
difference between a Duke and a Marquis ; knew the differ- 
ence between a Marquis and a Viscount ; knew the difference 
between a Viscount and a Commoner; but she did not know 
the difference between a Senator and a Representative. 

Well, I am not an old man, as you see, gentleman, but I 
can remember the day when we imported our story books, 
when we had not any authors of our own, when we imported 
our school books, and when I knew a great deal more about 



31 

English bullfinclies, and about English robin red-breasts than 
I knew about American mocking birds, or than I knew about 
anything that was going on around me here. It is that sort 
of danger that I think it should be the business of this society 
to arrest, that we may know something of our American 
government here. 

And (I was going to say the English of it), the American 
of it is that feudal institutions break down about fifteen min- 
utes after the emigrant has landed here. We have got in 
Boston the old halberds that were carried before Winthrop, 
the first Governor. The inevitable question was, " What be 
them good for ? What have those men got them things there 
for?" But it was not very long that the Governor went 
around with the halberdiers before him, that the American 
government had to institute itself, did institute itself, and 
institutes itself to-day. 

What is the beginning of government ? It is generally a 
road. How does the American build a road ? There must be 
a road. A dozen of them get together and say, *' We must 
have a road. We must go up to the Four Corners. We must 
all get together and we are going to get a road. We must 
all get together and build a road." The word " together " is 
the key-word. I fancy most of you here have been summoned 
by the road builder of the neighborhood to turn out either in 
person or by proxy to build a road. That is the way in which 
Americans build roads. You do not have to send up to Paris 
and ask the Secretary of Interior Improvements to select an 
officer of engineers, to select a sub-officer, who shall direct an 
apjjrentice of his to make out a plan for a road and have that 
sent down, to tell where the road shall go. You build a road 
and that is the end of it. You want a school : you don't send 
up to Albany to inquire of the University Trustees or Regents, 
or whoever they are — I dare say you are one of them yourself, 
Mr. President — to know if it is proper to have a school put 
into this region or that region. You get together some Sab- 
bath day after meeting and say, ' ' I guess we had better have 
a school here, and we will have a school meeting to-morrow 



33 

evening." The school meeting is called and tlie school is 
established. Mr. Tennyson has given the word for us, build- 
ing better than he knew, and I have to alter a word or two of 
his lines to fix it for the occasion: "The common sense of 
each shall keep a fretful world in awe." That is the way 
America is governed. It is governed by the common sense of 
each. As dear Garfield said, " All the people are a great deal 
wiser than any one of the people." Now, it is immensely 
necessary that that should be remembered, because much 
more than half of what we read comes to us from feudal insti- 
tutions. If we don't import the books we import the men who 
write them. "We have some men writing for the morning 
papers or the evening papers, for this novel or that maga- 
zine, who may be the best fellows in the world, but who have 
not learned the American language. 

You allude to the Centennial. Twice in one month, last 
April, I read in the newspapers in this city an allusion to 
President Harrison as the "ruler" of this great country, 
Harrison never called himself the ' ' ruler " of this great coun- 
try. Grover Cleveland never called himself the "ruler" of 
this great country. Neither of them are such fools. They 
knew that they were the Chief Magistrates of this great 
country. That is a very different thing. What is President 
Harrison the ruler of ? I suppose in the strict sense it might 
be said that he is the ruler of the standing army, which con- 
sists of about thirty thousand men. I suppose he can tell 
those gentlemen where to go. And then the Navy — I think 
there are four vessels in the Navy now, are there not ? He is 
the ruler of the Navy. And for the rest, he is the Chief 
Magistrate of this great country, and he knows he is. He has 
very large powers as Chief Magistrate, as foreign nations may 
find out some day ; but he does not rule this country. This 
country rules him, and he knows that this country rules him. 
The great lesson that Abraham Lincoln had learned so well 
and which made Abraham Lincoln the leader, but not the 
ruler of this country — which made Abraham Lincoln the 
great leader of this country when a "headless democracy 



drifted to victory " — was that lie knew who he was — the Cliief 
Magistrate of tliis country, and never pretended that he was 
a mock king or emperor or viceroy. 

Now I was considering where our literature comes from, 
considering where the men are trained who write it ; the ten- 
dency of our young men to imitate foreigners. It is very 
necessary that at home, in the school, in the common work, 
in the newspaper, in everything that we do and everything 
that we say we shall be teaching j^eople to speak the Ameri- 
can language and not to be speaking French or German or 
Russian or even English. 

The words that we use have been used in feudal times in 
different ways. This great word ' ' people " which I have 
used a dozen times ; I looked it up the other day. You will 
find the "people" spoken of by Cowley as the scum — actu- 
ally tlie dregs or scum. You go to Shakespeare and you find 
Shakespeare speaking of them a good deal as we speak of the 
populace now ; making the same distinction as the aristocratic 
Roman state, which spoke of the Roman Senate and the Roman 
people. As they say on the other side, ' ' We must show the 
people, you know, what the peox^le, you know, are to do, you 
know." But the American language says "We, the people, 
ordain this constitution." Any man who speaks of the people 
as the dregs, or speaks of the people as the poj)ulace, dis- 
honors America, dishonors his sovereign, as a man might dis- 
honor Victoria if he should throw something in her face when 
he stood before her. All that is to be remembered, and the 
children are to be taught what is the "fountain of honor." 
They must learn their own language. They must learn that 
an American elm is not an English elm ; an American oak is 
not an English oak ; an American locomotive is not an Eng- 
lish locomotive ; an American railway is not an English rail- 
way; an American president is not an English king; an 
American Senate is not an English House of Lords; an 
American House of Representatives is not an English House 
of Commons ; the Episcopal Church in America is nothing like 
the Anglican Church in England; the Methodist Church in 



America is notliing like the Methodist Church in England ; 
the American newspaper is not an English newspaper ; the 
American magazine is not an English magazine. Yon may 
as well get an English gardener here from Devonshire and 
set him to work raising fuchsias under our wintry climate of 
winter, and tro^Dical sun of summer, as to be taking your 
politics or your morals from a French novel or from an Eng- 
lish newspaper. The thing which we must teach these child- 
ren is that the fountain of honor is not in any sovereign who 
sits on any throne, though he wear one crown or though he 
wear three crowns, Mr. President, but that the fountain of 
honor is the American people. 




ADDRESS BY 
REV. D. C. KELLY. 

"TENNESSEE IN THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION." 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : Would that some more 
fitting representative were here to speak for the Volunteer 
State — a soubriquet which comes down from the time of our 
Revolutionary sires, and has been vindicated by repeated 
actions upon her part since. . At a time when Washington 
in a private letter had said, ' ' I have almost ceased to hope, " 
a volunteer band from Tennessee began the movement which 
culminated in the decisive battle of King's Mountain, a battle 
which turned the tide of destiny and hastened the hour of 
final victory at Yorktowu. Many and many a winter's night 
was my childhood thrilled and entranced with recitals of the 
part played by the heroes in this struggle, the more so as 
three strains of my blood are traced back to these men. 
King's Mountain and its memories have been the fountain 
from which the early Tennessean drank deep draughts of 
patriotism, so that down the coming years, in every critical 
hour, our good State has volunteered, by deed and word, to 
prove her devotion to the fair fabric of the Ameriean Union. 

When, in the war of 1812, she was too remote from the 
seat of government to be asked to take part, she again, under 
the call of Andrew Jackson, struck a blow at New Orleans 
which redeemed American arms from previous inefficiency, 
if not disgrace. When nulification sought to impede the pro- 
gress of the Union, we furnished the man who, from the 
Presidential chair, said, ' ' The Union, it must and shall be 



3G 

preserved. " Andrew Jackson but spoke what every Tennessee- 
heart and hand bade him utter. It was a President nurtured 
at the breast of Tennessee ambition and patriotism who gava 
the empire from the Gulf to the Pacific, to the flag of the 
Union. And when the call was made for troops to vindicate 
the American honor, Tennessee volunteers gathered so thick 
and fast to the standard that the Secretary of War had to beg 
them, to go home, that Massachusetts and New York might 
have an opportunity to take part in the war. Allow the re- 
cital of a characteristic compliment to the country now my 
home. To a timid politician, who feared that the climate and 
persistence of the Mexican soldier would be more than a 
match for American arms. Gen. Jackson, who was urging 
forward the war, replied, "Why, sir, I can take Gen. Win- 
chester and two thousand of his Sumner County boys and run 
every Mexican soldier into the Pacific ocean." No man better 
than Jackson knew the readiness of Tennesseans to die for 
their country. He and they knew no country less than the 
Union. 

When abolition persistence, and secession resistance threat- 
ened the dissolution of this Union, the blood of our Scotch- 
Irish patriots and Revolutionary sires held Tennessee true to 
her moorings to the Union. By a majority of 60,000, when 
the vote was submitted, we spoke for the Union. True, she 
afterwards entered the Confederacy, but first she had ex- 
hausted every effort looking toward peace. Who will censure 
her who remembers that she stood midway between two 
brothers ; that when the little brother would not hear us, true 
to our history we volunteered to see that the big brother 
should not crush the little one ; we stood by the weaker, we 
did our best and are not ashamed of our record. To-day we 
stand where we stood in the vote of 18 GO for the Union. Na 
man. North, South, East or West, loves more the stars which 
light our way to freedom, or the stripes which wrap us all in 
one brotherhood, than do the sons and daughters of Ten- 
nessee. Had our voice been heeded in 18G0, there had been 
no secession, no coercion, no deluge of blood. Why recall 



37 

these facts now ? I say this now because the hour has again 
become critical, and Tennessee again volunteers to speak from 
the standpoint of the Sons of the Revolution for the Union, 
fruit of their blood. In the race question, about which so 
much passion is gathering, Tennessee has no selfish interest ; 
except two or three counties in West Tennessee, the negro 
Inlays a minor part in our State politics. We occupy, there- 
fore, a position from which we can speak with both knowledge 
and candor. We know the negro, we love the Union, we ask 
the South and North, alike our brethren, to hear us. To the 
North allow a confession. We of the South are so provincial, 
have so much of old-time ways, are so little up with the elec- 
tric movements of the times that we wear the prejudices of 
our fathers toward all other people than our own. We have 
not yet learned to be cosmopolitan in our loves. Next to the 
Southern white man, I do confess it, we love the Southern 
negro more than we do any other man, white, black or yel- 
low. The Northern immigration agents have learned this to 
their sorrow. Our refusal to turn to any other laborers, our 
taxes to educate, our gifts to build churches for the negro, in 
other words, the movement of our pocket nerve affirms this 
as a fact beyond all doubt. We therefore come to ask the 
great, wealthy North that until it has associations as intimate 
and mutually profitable with the negro, until it knows him 
as we know him, until it has expended as large money 
toward his evangelization and education as we have done, it 
allow us to work forward along the lines we have projected, 
adding whatever of help she may, not along antagonistic, but 
co-operative lines. What we ask is that time be given the 
negro to prove himself. That we be trusted as partakers in 
the same Christian civilization to do our duty. 

In this presence I turn to the South, to that part of it which 
has now a struggle to make such as the world has never seen, 
to that era where intelligence and virtue are numerically 
prostrate before ignorance and brutal lusts, and turning, I say, 
do justice, full justice, to the negro in all of his political and 
civil rights ! give him rightful opportunity, and trust him in all 



38 

civil interests, to tlie fullest extent of his power, to sustain 
our Christain freedom ; touch not the cart on which the sacred 
right of the ballot is being borne, though the oxen may stum- 
ble that draw it ; sustain the constitutional amendments to 
which we pledged our honor in the hour when only honor was 
left us. I know your fears that the negro lust will lead him, 
with these rights conceded, to make dangerous the purity of 
your women, and taint the proud Anglo-Saxon blood of the 
generations to follow. This I do not believe will be the re- 
sult. ' Should it be attempted by force of brute or force of 
law, I pledge you the faith of the sons of the American Revo- 
lution, reared on Tennessee soil and scattered widely over the 
great West, to stand by you, if need be, in resistance to all 
compulsion, along this line until there shall be no Tennessean 
to bear the tidings from our Thermopylae. "We propose that 
the whole nation help us bear this burden — distribute them, 
if we may ; if not, patience and co-operation must solve it. 
When it is solved, you will find Tennessee upon the right side 
of it ; until it is decided, we stand for two things, and will 
gladly die in defense of either — the chastity of our women and 
the union of these States for which our Revolutionary sires 
prayed and bled. 



^ 



ADDRESS BY 
CAPTAIN CHARLES KING. 

Mr. Presid€7it and Gentlemen: It is tlie unexpected that 
always liappens. Up to tlie instant in ■wliich. my name was 
called I had not the faintest suspicion that such a catastrophe 
was impending. You call upon me to respond for the West 
when, in the presence of eminent representatives from Chicago, 
St. Louis and St, Paul, I had every reason to expect immunity 
for myself and better luck for you. Accepting the inevitable, 
however, and placing the responsibility on the shoulders of 
our presiding officer, I shall face the music and not surrender 
without a fight. The West is full of good intentions, be the 
result what it may. 

Perhaps the best evidence I can give you of the good inten- 
tions that pervade the new-born western branch of our society 
will be a brief statement of the difficulties, if not the dangers, 
which have surrounded the birthright of the Wisconsin 
Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Only a 
little while ago we heard reference to the fact that in some of 
the Eastern States competent voters are manufactured, after 
a declaration of their intentions and after the three years pro- 
bationary period, from foreigners who are able, perhaps, by 
the aid of an interpreter, to translate a line or two of the Con- 
stitution, But in the West we have gone beyond that. It is 
my privilege to be a resident of a city that embraces probably 
two hundred and twenty-five thousand people, fully two- 
thirds of whom bear names which are indicative of their 
foreign birth or ancestry. In some of our sureets one may at 



40 

any time meet the sign "English spoken here," as an encour- 
agement to those who are of American birth to come in and 
purchase. 

When the society was first referred to in onr local papers, 
the Governor issued over his signature a call for its meeting. 
You have n»o idea with what promptitude and pugnacity the 
Democratic press of Wisconsin antagonized our infant effort, 
and strove to grind it into powder. Fancy the Sons of the 
American Revolution being denounced as members, not only 
of a society whose watchword was "Know Nothing ;" who had 
a password and a grip which nobody could understand ; but 
whose ultimate purpose was the utter eradication of the rights 
of all citizens who could not claim to be Americans by birth. 
Let me tell you that to anybody who has political aspirations 
in the Badger State nothing could be more damaging. I have 
not a doubt that my eminent friend here (Mr. Rublee) who 
ought to have been in my place, but who is now basely shirk- 
ing at the end of the table, has forfeited all his chance of 
future preferment to the Senate of the United States by his 
alliance with this society. 

All through the State of Wisconsin, especially in our 
bjreweries and our lager beer saloons, you may find suspended 
on the wall, a large picture ; it represents a group of gentle- 
men attired, some in the Continental uniform, others in the 
dress worn by the Hussars, the Dragoons, the old Potsdam 
Fusileers of Germany. It bears a title which, translated, 
means, "The Chieftains of the Revolution." There, foremost 
among them, with his chapeau in one hand and his sword in 
the other, is Steuben. Now, I yield to no man in my appre- 
ciation and admiration of the services of the German Baron 
in the discipline and instruction that he gave to the Conti- 
nental Army, but I look in vain for the names and figures 
that in my boyhood's days were familiar as household words. 
I look in vain for Knox and Gates, Schuyler, Putnam, Marion. 
Instead of them there are Steuben, Kosciusko, Pulaski, 
DeKalb and Poniatowski, or some other eminent foreigner. 
Why, there are seven generals represented in that picture 



41 

wliich. is to be found all over our Badger State to-day, and 
there is only one American among tliem who is recognized as 
having had any part or parcel in achieving the independence 
of these colonies, and that one, by the grace of God and Ger- 
many, is George Washington. 

And yet, I would not have you think for a moment that 
we have not national Germans among us. It so happens that 
the man whose name stands third on our list of membership 
is a citizen who can hardly speak the English language to- 
day without a strong German accent, and yet he said at our 
last meeting — and, by the way, it took four calls before we 
could get our peojile together — "I have come in defiance of 
what my neighbors have said ; I have come in defiance of the 
tirades of the press ; I am here because my ancestors came 
over and took up the gauntlet with the American colonies, 
and gave me and mine a place among you. I am not a Ger- 
man to-day. From my grandsire's time, from this time, from 
now until time immemorial through my descendants, I am 
an American." You do not begin to dream of the pluck that 
that took in our community. 

Forgive me that I could not entertain you better. You 
have all heard the old nursery rhyme of "The Spider and the 
Fly." Had I dreamed of the fate in store for me to-night, 
you can depend upon it that this particular victim of a most 
alluring invitation would have thought twice before venturing 
in. But I believe you will bear me out in the assertion that 
I am by no means the first misguided little blue-bottle that 
has had to succumb to an indomitable Webb. 



<|9 



ADDRESS BY 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : I did not know until yes- 
terday that I was to "be a guest at this hospitable board to- 
night. When I received the telegram from your President 
yesterday evening, requesting me to respond to a toast, I re- 
plied that the time was too short for me to do justice to such 
a subject. I must say, however, that I am deeply impressed 
with the importance of this organization and the great bene- 
fits which are to be derived from its extension in the 
future. 

There are some questions that are of mutual interest to us 
all. I come from the State of South Carolina, which was the 
first to secede from this Union twenty-five years ago. She 
was true to her convictions. Nothing but the great war of 
four years through which we passed could have settled the 
divisions in this nation. I am one of those who believe in 
plain, outspoken words, because plain understandings make 
long friendships. The issues of that war have been decided 
upon the field of battle, and when I gave up my sword at the 
surrender of General Johnston in North Carolina, the issues 
of the past were dead with me, and I am sure they are with 
that section which I represent. There are, however, before 
us many questions which can only be settled by the whole 
country and not by a party; and the greatest of all of those 
questions to-day which rise before us paramount to everything 
else in this great country, is the negro question in the South. 
The devotion of the Southern people to the negro himself, and 



43 

their faith and their love for their former masters can be best 
illustrated by an incident which I will relate to you as having- 
happened to me about ten or fifteen years after the war ended. 
I returned to my home in South Carolina, where a number of 
my former slaves called uj)on me after an absence of fifteen 
years, and the old foreman, "Wash" — George Washington 
was his name, but we called him "Wash" — stepping- 
to the front, addressed me as " Massa Johnnie," and 
said, "We have called upon you to-night to express our 
gratitude at your having returned to this country, and to say 
that we want to see something of you while you are here. My 
wife, Hannah, who was your mother's cook, and myself have 
bought a little home about two miles from here, and we want 
to ask you if you wont come out and eat dinner with us to- 
morrow ?" I said, "Wash, with a great deal of pleasure I 
will come." On the next day I mounted a horse and rode 
over two miles to Wash's home, where he had bought a 
hundred acres of land near Camden, South Carolina, the 
homestead of my ancestors. When I went to the house, a log- 
cabin with two rooms, I found Hannah, who was my mother's 
old cook, and had provided many a good dinner for my 
mother's guests at our homestead. I knew just how it would 
be. There was only one plate at the table and that was for 
me. There was banquet enough to have served fifteen or 
twenty people. There was a tablecloth on the table with a 
hole in it and the initials of my family. It was one that my 
m.other had given her, and around the room were photographs 
of the children of my father's family. Old Hannah was 
loquacious, but "Wash" was dignified, kept his arms folded 
during the whole dinner and did not open his mouth. Han- 
nah asked me all about the different members of the family 
and all sorts of questions, and finally said, "Massa Johnnie, 
I want you to come outside and see all the people." I went 
outside and there were fifty or a hundred of my father's old 
negroes who had dressed up and come there to meet me. I 
had never eaten a dinner in my life that had given me such 
pleasure, and had never enjoyed an occasion so much in my 



44 

life as I did to go out and sliake liands witli those who had 
been my companions in my early life, and those who had 
grown np since. They were all glad to see me, and I spent 
an hour and a half or two hours with them. I went over to 
Atlanta, Georgia, and sent them back a number of barrels of 
sugar and sacks of coffee to be distributed among them as 
mementoes of the occasion. I simply mention this to show 
to you the good feeling that exists between the old mas- 
ters of the South and the old slaves to-day. I, myself, 
have had a vast experience with negroes on the Mississippi 
River since the war, and was one of the first in the South to 
institute the system of tenants. I recognize the fact that the 
negi'O was made a citizen after the war, and was given the 
right of suffrage, and have endeavored to fit him for the duty 
of citizenship by interesting him in the products of the soil ; 
upon the ground that a man who has his own home and finds 
himself surrounded by the products of the soil, takes much 
more interest in the country and becomes a better citizen. 

I am a great believer in education as a great civilizer, and 
am one of those of the South who have endeavored to educate 
the negro. I think I understand him in all his attributes. 
When he is put under intelligent management, and will fol- 
low the advice of those who are more competent to administer 
his affairs, he will succeed. I have had some of them with 
me in Mississippi make enough money to go into the interior 
and buy homes of their own, but within three years have had 
them return to me and say, "Look here, I want my same land 
back again." "What has become of the home you bought?" 
*'I done mortgaged it to Mr. Myeror somebody, some store- 
keeper, and he has foreclosed and took it away from me. I 
want my home back again." The great trouble is that the 
negroes of the South are not competent to manage their own 
affairs, and they want efficient and intelligent management, 
and I am one of those who don't want to see the negro problem 
left to the South alone. Seven millions of negroes are a very 
serious element in the South, but, when scattered throughout 
the great population of this country, sink into insignificance. 



45 

T want to see the intelligence of the North unite with that 
of the South and find the solution of this trouble, which has 
not been reached to-day. 

Now, gentlemen, I am not going to make a speech, be- 
cause I did not come here prepared for that purpose ; but I 
only make one sentiment, which is, the success and prosperity 
of this organization of the Sons of the American Revolution. 
Let us strive as citizens of one country to take that flag and 
carry it into every part of the world and make it the highest 
■emblem of modern civilization. 




ADDRESS BY 
COL. ETHAN ALLEN. 

"ETHAN ALLEN AND THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS." 

Col. Ethan Allen began by referring to a Marshal of France, whose- 
portrait hangs at Versailles ; who, by the fortune of battle, had lost an eye, 
an ear, an arm and a leg in the service of his country. The old warrior 
thanked God that he still had left his heart to offer to his country. He 
continued in substance : 

I have often thonglit tliat our heroes of the Revolution 
were epitomized by this soldier of France. We who are liere 
assembled are not organized for a holiday purpose. There is 
work. We need an American sentiment. When a foreigner 
visits our shores, be he jockey or prince, the newspapers are 
filled with his views, telling what he thinks of us. We 
want a sentiment which shall change that, and make foreign- 
ers anxious to know what we think of them. Oh, for an 
Ethan Allen in our diplomacy, who once defied the tempter 
who offered to bribe and seduce him from his allegiance, and 
who, by his defiance, proved before the world that, " By the 
Great Jehovah," he was every inch a man. It stirs us to our 
very centre when we read, as we have lately, that a represent- 
ation of this great power at foreign courts have bent the 
cringing knee to kingly power, and, after kissing the hand of 
royalty, have gone to their own banqueting table, and that 
the first toast has been "The traditions and the history of the 
United States and their similarity to the history and the des- 
potism" to which they were accredited. We say to our 
representatives, learn that the greatest honor is the majesty 



47 

ivith wliich you are clotlied by tliis great government, and 
tliat tlie Republican bead, 'wbich is surrounded witb a balo of 
liberty, intelligence and progress, ranks with any bead in 
Cbristendom surmounted by coronet or crown. 

We bave already done mucb for the world besides that 
which was done simply for our own advantage. It was our 
navy which drove the corsair from the seas. Through their 
prowess, for more than half a century, not a hostile gun has 
vexed the commerce of the world. Tho corsairs of the land 
remain ; and to remove them is the work marked out for this 
organization of Sons of the American Revolution. The noble 
knights of the feudal ages still hold sway. They now take on 
the names of kings and emperors. From London, we hear of 
dens of infamy, kept only for the patronage of the creatures 
who .flutter around the throne. From Berlin we hear of 
Jetires cle cachet, the cruel instruments of tyranny, by which 
people may be captured, imprisoned and condemned, by 
autocratic will, and no one bound to tell the reason why. 
And from further East we hear of human beings being tor- 
tured by the refinement of cruelty, men dying from starva- 
tion and worse, and women uttering their death shrieks be- 
neath the Russian lash. The people of those countries plead 
to us as their only hope and refuge. It is our duty to extend 
to them the hand of sympathy, as one might say to them, 
" Arise and walk.'' 

We are the wealthiest nation in the world. We are the 
strongest. We have 7,000,000 fighting men, and our bayonets 
and swords think. We are the freest nation. America is the 
beacon of hope to all mankind. The time is coming when 
other nations must be remanded to the rear, as having had 
their day. May the Sons of the American Revolution speed 
the time. The world shall hear and understand, that, al- 
though the fathers of our Revolution have been gathered to 
their graves, yet their * 'souls are marching on." 



ADDRESS BY 

HON. WARNER NIILLER. 

3Ir. President and GenUeTnen : — I appear here to-niglit 
as a guest of the Sous of the Americau Revolution. I barely 
escaped being a host. Some time ago, when the society was 
being organized in the State of New York, I was asked to be- 
come one of its charter members. The papers were sent me 
for my signature. I was too busy then in politics or in busi- 
ness to sign and respond. But I cannot say that I regret it, 
Mr. President, for to be a guest at this hospitable board is 
certainly a thing to be prized more than the holding of the 
position of host. It has given me great pleasure to be here 
to-night, first, chiefly, to meet my friend, Mr. Depew, with 
whom I have been associated somewhat in the last few days, 
and to find him in such good spirits. I only regret that, hav- 
ing fired his shot, he has left us. On Monday night and 
Tuesday of this week, I think he was the bluest and most 
disconsolate man I ever knew. I do not think he had the 
slightest idea then of ever being a candidate for President of 
the United States. To-night he stood up smiling, when our 
toastmaster nominated him for the next Presidency, and he 
accepted it without the slightest hesitation. I have no doubt 
whatever, that, if we had had the benefit of the efforts of the 
Sons of the American Revolution at Chicago in 1888, we 
might have made him President then ; and I am very sure 
that, if we could have rallied this association at Washington 
a few days ago, we should have come out triumphant there. 



49 

I was struck with Mr, Depew's proposition that for more 
than one hundred years we had forgotten our fathers, that we 
had ceased to celebrate their virtues and to dwell upon their 
great exploits and heroism. There may be somewhat of truth 
in that criticism, and yet I feel that it is not fully true. We 
have not during these hundred years and more, forgotten the 
virtues of our ancestors, and if there may be something of 
truth in the criticism, may this not come from the fact that 
during this century we ourselves and our immediate prede- 
cessors have taken up the contest which our Revolutionary 
fathers laid down, and that, after having achieved the inde- 
pendence of this country, they found before them a great con- 
tinent^ which was to be subdued and brought into civilization. 
That work has been done, Mr. President, in a very large part. 
One hundred years ago our civilization was confined to a nar- 
row strip upon the Atlantic coast ; it had not yet really scaled 
the Alleghany Mountains. I do not forget that bold pioneers 
from North Carolina and from Virginia had gone over the 
mountains and had done what the representative of Tennessee 
here to-night has related, and had made a Constitution for a 
free government. Nevertheless, we were then substantially 
confined to a narrow strip upon the Atlantic coast. During 
this one hundred years, if we have forgotten our fathers, we 
certainly have been emulating to a certain extent their energy 
and their heroism, for we have conquered a continent. From 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, there is to-day no foot of land 
which we do not possess, no foot of land which our enterpris- 
ing and energetic citizens have not traversed, have not sur- 
veyed and have not brought out its full value, whether it be 
in mineral land, or agricultural or in timber. To-day we 
have, perhaps, come down to the time when we can properly 
rest; and when we can glorify ourselves upon what our 
forefathers have done. Perhaps we have come to that period 
in our history when our greatness is chiefly a borrowed great- 
ness ; when we inherit our wealth and our title and our posi- 
tion in society, and all the great blessings which come to us 
from modern civilization ; and still I am not willing for a sin- 



50 

gle moment to admit that we have comie to that position. 
Certainly in a place like this I would not admit it for a single 
moment. I look around me and I see scores of gentlemen who 
look harmless, who look mild as lambs and innocent as doves, 
who dress in the regalia of modern society, who would pass 
anywhere as elegant gentlemen, but still who in the past 
twenty-five years have engaged in as many heroic and brave 
enterprises as the history of the world can produce ; though 
they may not weigh more than one hundred and fifty pounds 
avordupois, and who, perhaps, may have very slender mus- 
cles, yet who, by the power of their intellects have led hun- 
dreds of thousands of men to brave encounters, and who have 
done credit to our race, to our forefathers, and to our nation, 
not only at home but in foreign lands, Mr. . President. No, 
we are not the degenerate sons of the American Revolution. 
Although we may take our ease at banquets like this, yet the 
history of the past quarter of a century teaches us that when- 
ever our country shall call upon its best blood and its best 
intellect, it will always find them among that class of our 
people who are the best educated and who hold closest in 
their hearts the memory of our ancestors. 

I have listened with much interest to the words which 
have been spoken by the representatives here of Tennessee 
.and of South Carolina, in regard to one of the great burning 
■questions of the day. I do not propose to discuss it at all ; but 
I will say that the words of wisdom that have been spoken 
here, the words of patriotism, lead me to believe that, perhaps 
from this common ground of the Sons of the American Revo- 
lution, where the blue and the gray may meet upon a perfect 
equality, perhaps much may be done towards solving this 
difficult problem, and that, by the same loyal spirit that made 
one people out of the thirteen Colonies, we shall be able, in 
the very near future, Mr. President, to bring out of the pres- 
ent contest upon this question, a condition of affairs which 
shall prove that the loyalty of American citizens, that the 
loyalty and patriotism of the Sons of the American Revolu- 
tion, are sufficient at all times and under all conditions to 



51 

settle all great questions that may come before the American 
people. Therefore, to-night, in these few words, and simply 
s,s a guest of this association, I desire to thank you and the 
society for the pleasure which you have given, not only to 
me, but to all the guests that have assembled here from the 
various States of the Union ; to thank you for bringing us 
here in order that we might witness and know more of the 
spirit and the intention of this society. Finally, in conclusion, 
I believe that the spirit which has organized this society ; 
which is evinced here to-night, is destined to carry it to a 
great future and a great success. 




m:m.:^.:m:m:m.:m 



ADDRESS BY 
IVIAJOR J. C. KINNKY. 

"CONNECTICUT IN THE REVOLUTION." 

Mr. President and Geiitlemen : — What could the most 
silver-tongued of after-dinner orators do at such an hour as 
this, with such a theme as you have assigned to me, with the 
knowledge that he has less than five minutes to give to it. 
There is no good son of Connecticut who is not proud of 
her, proud of her from the days back 250 odd years ago, 
when, begging the pardon of my friend from Tennessee, cer- 
tain of her citizens met in the goodly town of Hartford, and 
there framed and adopted the first written Constitution of a 
self-governing people that the world ever knew, jjroud of her 
from that day down to her latest patent invention to save 
labor, to increase knowledge, to promote comfort, to destroy 
life, or to put a nickel in the slot. They are particularly 
proud, sir, of her Revolutionary record. Of the thirteen 
Colonies, Connecticut was the only one which had a Governor 
that dared to champion the cause of the commonwealth against 
the crown — noble Jonathan Trumbull, perhaps better known 
as Washington's "Brother Jonathan." We have a lineal 
descendant bearing the same name with us here to-night, the 
honored Vice-President of the Connecticut Society. 

The little Nutmeg State, as she is sometimes contemptuously 
called, furnished more men to the Revolutionary struggle 



53 

than any other State, with the single exception of Massachu- 
setts. I am inclined to think, that if we take the proportion 
of population into consideration, she stood ahead of Massa- 
chusetts. She gave of her sons forty thousand. New York, 
now the Empire State, gave less than eighteen thousand In 
all the battles and campaigns around this little island, Con- 
necticut had more men in the field than any other State, and 
twice as many as New York, 

I mention these few frozen facts of history merely to give 
you an idea of what I might say to you, if I had a week in- 
stead of five minutes in which to talk. I believe, in this dis- 
tinguished assemblage, to-night, that if a show of hands could 
be called, more men would be found claiming ancestry from 
Connecticut than from any other State. 

I bring to you, Mr. President and gentlemen, the greeting 
of the Connecticut Society. Only eleven months old, it has a 
membership of over three hundred, and on its rolls are names 
by the score, which represent the household names of heroes 
of a century ago. At our first dinner, a week ago, at one 
table there were seated the lineal descendants of Jonathan 
Trumbull, Israel Putnam, Oliver Wolcott, Jedediah Hunt- 
ington and Timothy Dwight, and not far away were the 
representatives of Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth and Jere- 
miah Wadsworth, 

We are grieved to know that a society in this city, whose 
President and Treasurer and perhaps one-third of its mem- 
bership point with pride to their Connecticut ancestry, is un- 
willing to recognize Connecticut's equal right with New York 
or any other State in an organization whose chief object is to 
perpetuate the memory of those ancestors. We are pleased 
and proud of the fact that the new and vigorous New York 
State Society, selected for its President a gentleman who, 
while the whole nation is proud of him, himself, like most 
other truly great men, traces his Revolutionary ancestry back 
into old Connecticut. And, finally, we take satisfaction in 
the fact that our little State furnished to the National Society 
the distinguished ancestry of our President-General, in that 



54 

gallant soldier and friend of Washington, General Samuel 
Blatchley Webb, one of the founders of the Society of Cin- 
cinnati, at whosa old mansion In Wethersfield, Washington 
met with the Count de Rochambeau, and planned the cam- 
paign which ended in the victory of the Continental cause at 
Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwallis. 




ADDRESS BY 
IMR. GKORGK G. BKNKDICT. 

President Webb and Brother Descendants of the Men of 
the American Revolution : — They say that Vermonters are a 
clannish set, and. we have to plead guilty to the offense, if 
such it be. That we are so, is perhaps explained, in part, by 
the fact that Vermont had a unique Revolutionary history. 
Our little State, as you know, was never a colony of the 
mother country. It never passed through any period of ter- 
ritorial tutelage. A portion of debateable ground, claimed 
by New York and ISTew Hampshire, it stood up for itself and 
declared itself to be an independent commonwealth. It or- 
ganized its own government, it established its own postal 
system, it apj)ointed its own Postmaster-General, it coined 
money, and exercised other powers and attributes of 
sovereignty. Denied admission to the new Union, Vermont 
for thirteen years maintained this attitude of independence, 
yet it was as loyal to the cause of American Independence as 
if it had been one of the old thirteen States whose first-born 
child it in time became. 

The commissioners that took to the Continental Congress 
the announcement of the organization of the Independent 
Commonwealth of Vermont, tendered to the Congress the ser- 
vices of five thousand hardy freemen for the maintenance of 
American Independence. As there could hardly have been 
five thousand families in the State of Vermont, this was an 
offer of a man from every household. And if you will turn 
to our records, you will find our little State in its penury, for 



56 

it was still a wilderness, appropriating large sums for the 
maintenance of its troops in tlie field. It furnished two full 
regiments to the Continental Army, and it offered to pay their 
expenses from its own treasury. The Green Mountain boys, 
under Ethan Allen, captured the first forts, those of Ticon- 
deroga and Crown Point (powerful works, armed with over 
two hundred cannon) taken from the British. They de- 
fended alone, their own territory and part of New York, and 
they fought side by side with their brothers of the other 
States throughout the war of the Revolution. 

Now, sir, having such a history, of which this is but a 
single page, we have learned to be somewhat proud of our 
Revolutionary record; but, sir, there is nothing exclusive 
about us. Vermont is the only State of which it can be said, 
that to-day more than one half as many of her sons reside in 
other States as reside within its boundaries. The last census 
showed that ; the next census will perhaps show that nearly 
two-thirds as many native Vermonters reside in other States 
as are found within our own borders. Having thus brothers 
in all the States, we are bound to them all by ties of blood as 
well as of patriotism, and we fraternize most cordially with 
every other branch of this society. 

Permit me to say, in this connection, in reference to a 
somewhat widely circulated statement to the effect that the 
Vermont Society hesitated about joining the National organi- 
zation, that I am not aware upon what fact or misconception 
that statement was based. I know of no foundation for it ; 
on the contrary, we have from the first expected to belong to 
the National organization, whenever it should be organized, 
and we gave to it our early and complete adherence. And so, 
taking no more time, I say, long life and health to our genial 
bost to-night, our worthy and efficient President-General, 
whose efforts to make our organization truly national, I am 
sure we all appreciate and applaud. We of the Green Hills 
have been glad to adopt him, as almost a Vermonter, for his 
summer home is on land granted to his ancestor for patriotic 
service in the State of Vermont, and we claim him as half a 



57 

Termonter. And long life and healtli to our National Society 
and its afl&liated branclies in the various States, which are 
already doing so much to strengthen patriotic sentiments 
throughout our land, and are destined to do so much more to 
cement the States together by the strong ties of fraternal feel- 
ing, in a true and indissoluble union of hearts as well as of 
sovereign, sister commonwealths. 



^ 



ADDEESS BY 
GKNKRAL J. G. IM'CULLOUGH. 

Mr President : — I did not expect to be called on to say any- 
thing, nor was my appearance to be a part of tbis entertain- 
ment. Besides, the time has flown so rapidly and pleasantly 
that you may not realize the fact, though such it is, that the 
"noon of night " has already passed, and that you are now 
trespassing on the forbidden hours of the Sabbath. 

Dr. Webb deserves all commendation for bringing us to- 
gether on this occasion, and on the very handsome and happy 
manner in which all the appointments have been fulfilled. 
And, even at this late, or rather, early hour, I may be ex- 
cused for saying a word. 

In these latter days, when on almost every festive occasion 
and at every appropriate gathering (and sometimes inappro- 
priate ones) we hear sung, and sung worthily, the praises of 
the virtues and the valor of the sons and survivors of the 
War of the Rebellion, upon the one side or the other, it is surely 
something grateful and unusual to know and to hear that the 
fathers have not been entirely forgotten; that without the 
fathers there would have been no sons, and that the fathers 
of these sons were the men who wrought out and constructed 
the edifice which the deeds of the sons preserved. It is 
supremely fitting, therefore, that occasions like this should be 
offered, when, by speech and song, the memories of the sires 
of the Revolution may be revived, and — going back a century 
— the recollections of those who stood sponsors at the birth of 
the Nation may be rehearsed, and the old story, no, the story^ 



59 

that never grows old, may be retold again and again of tlie- 
deeds that were done from Lexington to Yorktown. The 
shot at Lexington is still reverberating around the world. 
Emerson's " embattled farmers" and their compatriots from 
'75 to '81, aye, to '89, whether on field or in council chamber, 
grow greater in the world's estimation the more their lives 
are studied and the history of the long struggle is investi- 
gated ; and any society, whether the Order of the Cincinnati, 
or the Sons of the American Revolution, or any other that 
will encourage the study of the stalwart virtues of the found- 
ers of the Republic, is worthy of imitation and commenda- 
tion. All history teaches us that the greatest nations have 
ever been the proudest of their ancestors. It was true of 
Greece and Rome, and it is true of England; yet we would 
fain believe that no nation, either of ancient or modern 
times, was ever born beneath a luckier star, or opened its 
young eyes under more auspicious skies than our own Colum- 
bia. We believe her to be what the Revolutionary poet 
claimed she was : 

"The queen of the world and the child of the skies." 
Yes, and her sons can never be made too familiar with every 
incident that occurred at Bunker Hill, every deed that was 
done at Cowpens, at Valley Forge, or at Yorktown; every 
earnest word that was spoken in debate, every patriotic 
phrase that was uttered, every patriotic aspiration that was 
breathed on the floor of Carpenter's Hall or Independence 
Hall, or during the sittings of the Constitutional Conven- 
tion. 

And, Mr. President, if the time should ever come when, 
the descendants of those who fought for and achieved our 
independence, who won our freedom, and by wise counsels 
imbedded it in a written constitution, who framed the most 
magnificent fabric, and organized and set in motion the 
finest mechanism or representative government the world has 
thus far :^itnessed, shall forget the lessons of wisdom and of 
patriotism to be learned at the cradle of the great republic, 
they will have outlived their constitution and their country j 



GO 

"but we are persuaded such time will never come, and they 
will never forget. This society at least, and such as this, we 
would gladly believe, will always keep brightly burning 
the fires of patriotism on the altar of our country, 
and will serve in great measure to transmit this priceless 
heritage with all its attendant blessings unimpaired and undi- 
minished to the latest posterity. 




ADDRESS BY 
^^R. JOHN W. BUCHANAN, 

■Secretary of ttie K!©nt\acky Society of the Sons of the 
-A.merican Revolution. 

Mr, Chairman and Gentlemen : — It is generally under- 
•stood in Kentucky that when one gentleman insults another, 
the result is an apology, a fight, or a foot race. 

I think the same rule ought to prevail on occasions of this 
kind ; that when a gentleman is called upon for a speech, he 
ought to respond, or apologize, and I want to say I am now 
ready to apologize. 

My impulse is to run, but to run would be to disgrace the 
State whose representative I am to-night, and would also, 
probably, cause my revolutionary ancestors to turn over in 
their graves. 

The office which I hold in the Kentucky Society of the 
Sons of the American Revolution is not that of orator, but of 
one whose duty it is to record what others may say and do — 
the office of Secretary. 

I am to-night in the predicament of a cavalryman I once 
lieard of, who, during the late war, got lost from his com- 
mand, and, consequently, became confused. Seeing a lady 
standing at a gate by the roadside, he stopped his horse and 
said to her politely, " Madam, will you be kind enough to tell 
me where I am now, and how far it is to the next place ? " 

I cannot better express my appreciation of this dinner 
than by telling you that I left my wife and two small sons of 



62 

the American Revolution, and braved the perils of nearly a 
thousand miles of railroad travel in order to be here to-night, 
that being my sole object in making the journey. 

I have truly enjoyed this dinner in all its courses except 
the one I am now furnishing, and which, I assure you, I did 
not know was on the card. 

I have heard that it is a common belief outside of Ken- 
tucky, that all Kentuckians are at least six feet tall, and that all 
are gifted with oratory. Somebody has said that the first sen- 
tence framed by all Kentucky boy babies is, ' 'Friends and fellow 
citizens ;" but, gentlemen, I can refute those impressions, for, 
as you see, I am only five feet seven inches long, and I am 
sure that, as to oratory, I can secure from this audience a 
unanimous verdict of ' ' not guilty, as charged in the indict- 
ment;" but I can at least thank you for the compliment 
implied by calling upon me for a speech. I regret that there 
is no silver-tongued orator present from Kentucky to-night, 
to sound the praises of that State, famous the world over for 
its beautiful women, its brave men, its horses fleeter than the 
Arabian barb, its clear water and fragrant mint, and that 
other ingredient so necessary for the compounding of a drink 
said to be fit for the gods — commonly called a mint julej) — 
and I will say parenthetically, famous also for occasional 
shooting scrapes; but, as Mr. Blaine said about the trusts, 
' ' They are largely private affairs in which the public is not 
concerned;" but my regret is tempered by the pleasing 
reflection that all of you, or at least most of you, will be in 
Louisville at the Annual Convention of the National Society 
on the 30th of April, at which time Kentucky will speak for 
herself. 




ADDRESS BY 
REV. WIVI. R. PARSONS, 

F'RESIDENT OHIO S. A.. R. 

(Prepared, but not delivered, owing to the lateness of the hour.) 
"OUR REVOLUTIONARY FATHERS. " 

Long ago, one of tlie ancients said most beautifully, that, 
■" We never begin to live till we are dead," and this remark 
applies with great force to our Revolutionary fathers. Illus- 
trious men ! How vast their fame, how sublime their integ- 
rity, how exalted their virtues ? To them we give our 
■enlightened admiration, sincere gratitude, and profound 
respect. From Hheni we received our genius for political 
institutions. The Americans in their form of government 
have the most perfect examples of liberty, based on constitu- 
tional law, the world has yet seen. All this is in harmony 
with the genius of the people. Our fathers were not experi- 
menting with unknown forces and untried methods; they 
rather combined with an organic whole, growths and forces 
long familiar to them. Local self-government in the colonies 
had prepared the way for this — experience and race instinct 
was brought to its crown and glory. 

And as the race progresses, the historian will accord them 
still higher veneration. For their names and fame will give 
immeasurable significance to integrity the most pure, justice 
the most inflexible, and self-sacrifice the most sublime. 

As we go back to the beginning, and let that be the year 
1789, we see the talent, the learning, the courage and virtue, 



64 

patriotism and moral law tliat united in order to realize tlie 
meaning of the term "liberty." This moral law, beauty and 
dignity, sustained by energy, by wisdom, at their touch 
became creative, and Liberty herself was crowned immortal. 
So man in his jural relations with others can realize liberty in 
its fullness by developing his self-hood, yet under the moral 
law which recognizes the rights of others. 

The equal rights of man, personal liberty as we under- 
stand it, was all unknown to the republics of Greece and 
Rome ; it is only in the last quarter of the last century, that 
what we now speak of as equality and liberty, took hold of 
the life of the world. 

High and noble ideas of citizenship need to be strength- 
ened and enthused among our whole people. As noble deeds 
are more potential than words, if we live up to the level of 
our best thinking, in our social and political relations, as in 
our private life, then our beneficent system of government is 
safe. Would we be abreast of time, then we must be strong 
in soul power, clearness of vision and individual personality. 

The grand men of the Revolution had a genius for phil- 
osophy, power of reflection, that separated them from all 
false authority. They had a genius for humanity, power of 
instinct which made them despise the practice of such as said 
and did not, though they had lordly titles and claimed divine 
rights. The day will come when the great humanity will 
look upon these majestic men, sympathetic with unmeasured 
and unwasting love. They will be changed into their image 
and likeness, and speak their highest word and emulate their 
glory. We know that since their higher and better thought 
have visited our race, a new power has been consciously 
among us. Their grandeur was enhanced by a greatness of 
the highest type. They were the great strategists, majestic 
chiefs who planned campaigns, whose field should be an 
empire, and whose duration an age. What they did, tells 
what they were! In all the past, there is naught so grand 
or brilliantly triumphant. Their greatness is the climax 
of our joy and our confidence. 



65 

When we ponder the history of these stalwart men, what 
they thought, said and accomplished, we feel the power of 
their inner life — so intensely active, grand and interesting. 
They had new and sublime thoughts for their thinking. 
They sowed a continent with ideas and principles that 
brought forth a harvest of immeasurable good; that have 
filled the whole land with songs and shoutings. Here 
flourished the irrepressible convictions of the rights of man. 
A prophecy of what must be — the infinite right. 

This is a rare occasion — an occasion for gratitude and con- 
gratulations. For congratulations that this National Society 
of the Sons of the American Revolution had perfected its 
organization, and has been so fortunate in its chosen offi- 
cers. 

This companionship, this elect company, these devoted 
men, help us in our homely every-day lives. Life is made 
up, for the most part, of little pains and little pleasures. 
The great wonder flowers do not bloom for every one ; but 
any great work that unites men in a grand purpose is such a 
flower, the fragrance of which will fill the ages. 

Beyond the immediate intentions of this society will be 
felt the promotion of a national patriotism, that will draw all 
sections into a nearer and dearer fellowship and kind-hearted 
interest. This will go on till fraternity shall widen and 
deepen throughout this broad land. 

The Yankees have a singular collection of words about 
deacons. They tell us that "all deacons are good deacons, 
but there is odds in deacons." There is a magnanimity in our 
association in which we bury our strifes, and guard sacred 
liberty for all our millions. And no people and no nation 
was ever so frankly magnanimous as America. This liberty 
brings us into friendlier familiarity ; for there gathers about 
us an innumerable company, the heroes of the American 
Revolution, our fathers, our ancestors. This is a high and 
holy vision — 

' ' Not to dwarf us by their stature, but to show 
To what bigness we may grow. " 



66 

The solemn centuries — tlie anointed priests — enthrone the 
true kings of God. Bunyan is greater to-day than ever, 
Milton was never so visible in all the outlines of spiritual 
majesty. Shakespeare communes with the wide world. 

About living men we have opinions, about dead men we 
have judgments. They are part and parcel of our substance 
and destiny. Here, a free country grows free men, and free 
men honor the responsibilities of liberty. To-night our 
gracious task has been eulogy, and its flowers are not dead ; 
but rooted in earth and sun. In all this there is comfort, 
priceless, full and abiding. For we believe in deferred grati- 
tude — it inspires eulogy, and all that is magnanimous in 
justice. These men of the Revolution were the creators of 
prophecies, poems and progress. The memories which we 
memorialize work like a spell upon the imagination and 
reverence, and are in the keeping of universal love — which 
educates toward completeness and liberty. 

' ' When the war drum throbs no longer. 
When the battle flag is furled, 
In the parliament of man — 
The federation of the world." 

The revolutionary fathers were the product of the mighty 
past. They were in the long schooling of the ages. They 
had pressed through the horrors of a wilderness prepara- 
tion, and hailed the coming of the great and notable day 
when monarchy on this continent should be smitten to the 
■death, and wholly new political philosophy should crowd 
the highways of time with a new order of people — and the 
•door of a proud nation's capitol should be within the reach 
of the lonely cabin, and the tow-paths of our inland water- 
way would lead to the highest office in the gift of any people, 
of any clime or time. 

We must realize that each generation is destined to con- 
front new and peculiar perils — to brave some dangers, some 
new seduction unknown before ; yet, the giant -v^frongs which 
we once deemed invulnerable; how like a dream they have 
passed away! And is not this progress a general law of 



67 

•our being ? There is an ordered life about us, names and 
memories which are a strong tower, "a munition of rocks." 
But there is a trust and faith that makes a soft pillow for 
Sorrow's cheek, warmth to the clasp of friendship, that ever 
•clings to the hand; consolations voice an eternal echo on the 
•ear. There is a quality in the tone, a luminous smile, the 
•eloquent eye and we feel a related life. It is like the ministry 
•of dew in nature — it adds something to the rarest beauty, and 
multiplies the sun-flash that falls on it like a blessing. 

There is a legend among the dwellers by the Rhine, that 
on one night in every year, when the moon is at its full, the 
great Imperial Charles emerges from his tomb, and again 
visits the scenes he loved on earth. When the moonbeams 
fall on the noble river and fling from bank to bank a bridge 
of light, upon that bridge of moonbeams the monarch walks, 
calling down blessings upon all the German land. He blesses 
the earth, the corn-fields, the cities, the towns, the sleeping 
people, all, and his loving mission ended, he retires softly to 
his resting place. 

These traditions and legends may be an idle fancy, but I 
can think that in this vast city to-night, the founders of the 
republic are here by their genius and spirit — they are here to 
renew in every thoughtful heart the patriotism that fired 
their own. They are here in all that constitutes us a brave, 
free and united people. They are here in all their sublime 
integrity, which poured itself into our whole land, and so 
made America magnanimous and transcendent in glory before 
the world. 

And now I conclude by repeating : ' ' We never begin to 
live till we are dead." While they lived they wrote the 
prophecy, and the parable of the unseen, and the sublime 
possibilities of America. Beginning with the colonies and 
coming down to our times, we have been gathering and stor- 
ing their chief ideas, their supreme convictions, divine right 
of liberty in man. Organized institutional liberty — liberty 
through land, and law through liberty. 

What grandeur of spirit ! — beautiful as light, and eternal 



as the heavens. American ideas, American history, and 
American feeling ! All for each, and each for all, in endless 
harmony. And after these long years, we see what our 
fathers of the revolution saw ; that peaceful rule and popular 
contentment find their chief support in religion and morality. 
And as we look at our immense wealth, our national growth 
and prosperity and political wisdom, we must make our hum- 
ble confession in the language of Washington when he said : 

"It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a 
necessary spring of popular government." 




LKXTKRS. 

Senate, Paris, February 20th, 1890. 
* Mr. President: — I am very sensible of the honor conferred 
upon me by the invitation which yon have so kindly extended 
me to attend the banquet of the Sons of the American Revo- 
lution on March 1st, at New York, over which you have the 
honor to preside. I should have been delighted to assist at a 
manifestation so eminently patriotic, replete with associations 
dear to me as well as to yourself ; my parliamentary duties, 
however, as Senator, have such imperative claims on me that 
I am perforce compelled to stay at home. While conscious 
of the distinction implied by your invitation, I can but beg 
of you to accept my sincere thanks for the gratification that 
I feel at your remembrance of one so fortunate as to be the 
possessor of a name which neither you nor I will ever forget. 
Mr. President, accept this expression of my regrets, and 
also of my lively gratitude; and also convey to your colleagues 
the assurance of my most distinguished consideration. 

Edmond de Lafayette, 
Senateur de la Republique Francaise. 



War Department, 
Office op the Secretary, 
Washington, D. C, Feb. 27th, 1890. 
My Dear Sir: — In my letter to you of the 8th instant, ac- 
cepting your invitation for Saturday evening, March 1st, to 
meet the representatives and members of the Societies of the 

* Translated. 



70 

Sons of tlie American Revolution, I stated that I might find 
at a late day that it would be impossible for me to go. I 
regret that that contingency has arisen, and I must beg you 
to excuse me as you kindly promised to do in yours of 
the 11th. 

I the more regret my enforced absence because this 
gathering recalls a period in our National life which we can 
not keep too prominently before us. Our people are aggres- 
sive, and above all, progressive. It is not the present, much 
less the past, but rather the future which engages the best 
thought of our country. It has made us probably the most 
prosperous if not the most powerful country in tlie world. In 
the midst, however, of this restless activity, the danger is we 
may not heed enough what has gone before. The patient 
struggle and the conservative patriotism of our ancestors in 
their struggle for the freedom of the colonies and the estab- 
lishment of this Government, contain lessons which cannot 
be learned too well. 

The Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, whose 
object is so distinctively the preservation of these patriotic 
memories, deserves the largest measure of success. I have 
been pleased to note the progress it has already made, and 
also your own personal efforts, as their chief officer, to that 
end, which deserve great commendation. 

With kindest wishes for this present meeting and the 
future of the society, I am. 

Yours very respectfully, 

Redfield Proctor. 
Dr. William Seward Webb, 
President-General, &c., 

New York City. 



Indianapolis, Ind., Feb. 28th, 1890. 
W. S. W^ehh, E.sq., President S. A. R. : 

Dear Sir : — I regret my inability to be present at the 
meeting of the members of the National Society of the Sons 
of the American Revolution in New York next Saturday. 



71 

I most sincerely wish the society success. Its design is. 
certainly in the line of the purest and broadest patriotism, 
and deserves success. 

It is in no sense exclusive or aristocratic, as it opens wide 
its doors to the descendants of all who aided in achieving 
our success in the great Revolutionary struggle, without 
reference to rank in the army. 

It encourages not only a feeling of love of country, but of 
universal good will and brotherhood. 

In my judgment, it is especially commendable in tending 
to promote unity and kindly feeling between sections of our 
country unfortunately divided in modern times, whose aim 
now should be to forget these disagreements in the cultiva- 
tion of the old brotherly love, and the perpetual remembrance: 
of the sore trials and final triumph of our fathers when they^ 
stood together as one people in securing that great event in 
the world's history — the independence of the United States of 
America. 

Very respectfully, 

Wm. H. English. 



Executive Department, 
Frankfort, Ky., March 8th, '90. 
Colonel W. S. Webb, President Natioiial Society of the Sons 
of the American Revolution, Neiv York City : 
My Dear Sir: — I regret that my time has been so 
engrossed by the duties devolving upon the executive of the 
commonwealth during the sittings of the General Assembly,, 
that I have been unable to give to the Society of the Sons of 
the American Revolution, the attention which so eminently 
patriotic an association deserves. 

At a time when there seems to be a tendency to organize 
associations of some other character, which are local or sec- 
tional in their efforts, if not in their purposes, it is fortunate, 
I believe, for the future of our country, that we are building 
our structure on a foundation as broad as the Union, and that 
its parts will be cemented into a harmonious whole by the 



72 

memories of a common patriotism, and a common interest 
and a united struggle resulting in the independence and free- 
dom which we now enjoy. 

We have received this heritage from our fathers. It is 
for us to do everything that can be done in our day and gen- 
eration to transmit it with unimpaired glory to those who 
may come after us. 

Respectfully and truly yours, 

S. B. BUCKNER. 



Senate Chamber, 
Washington, D. C, March 8th, 1890. 

Dear Doctor Webb : — Yours of the 4th came duly. I 
was very sorry not to be able to attend your dinner on the 
first instant, although I could only receive the society's hos- 
pitality as a courtesy, for, as I wrote General Peck, at the 
time of the Revolution, all my ancestors, both paternal and 
maternal, were active and consistent members of the Society 
of Friends, and none of them could have been, therefore, 
actively engaged in the military operations of the Revolu- 
tion. 

I am sure the objects of your society are most interesting 
and valuable, and if all the worthy lineal descendants of the 
soldiers of the Revolution become its members, you will have, 
if there be any confidence to be put in the laws of population, 
an army much greater than the whole body of the Revolu- 
tionary Army of the United States. But it will doubtless be 
a, good and patriotic army that always by the forces of peace, 
when possible, and by military force when necessary, will 
protect and defend the Republic. 

Very truly yours, 

Geo. F. Edmunds. 

Dr. William S. Webb, 

Grand Central Depot, 

New York. 



73 

Headquarters Division of the Missouri, 
Chicago, III., March 11th, 1890. 
W. Seirard Wehb, M. D., President N. 8., S. A. E., New Yo7'k: 

My Dear Sir : — I am in receipt of your favor of the 4th 
inst. , asking my views with reference to the establishment of 
the Society of the Sons of the American Revohition. 

The perpetuity of our institutions and our governments 
must depend, ultimately, upon the patriotism of our people, 
and whatever influence tends to develop or keep alive this 
feeling, deserves to be fostered. 

There has been so much that is glorious in our history to 
celebrate — especially in the more recent events, which have 
-consolidated our power as a nation, and given strength to the 
struggling colonies which at first formed our republic — that 
we are inclined to lose sight of and forget the sacrifices of 
every kind which its establishment imposed uj)on our Revo- 
lutionary sires. 

It seems to me that during these anniversary years, when 
men naturally look backward at the past, the dangers of the 
present are apt to be lost sight of. That there are elements 
of danger lurking in our commonwealth, none can deny, and 
I believe that such organizations as the Society of the Sons of 
the American Revolution can be made of vast benefit in the 
present conditions of our country. Pride in the lives of noble 
a,ncestors is often the incentive to noble deeds, and what 
more glorious heritage can any of us have than the fact that 
our fathers perilled everything that their children might be free. 

If, as many think, we are drifting as a nation away from 
our old landmarks, that, with our increase in population, 
drawn so largely from the poorer classes of despotic countries 
(freedom so often means license) what can be so likely to 
bring us back to our moorings, if drifting, and hold us in 
good anchoi'age, as such societies, whose object and sole pur- 
pose is to inculcate and keep alive the feeling of patriotism 
which was the motive force of our soldier sires. 

Very sincerely yours, 

George Crook. 



74 

Executive Office, 
Nashville, Tenn., March lltli, 1890. 
Hon. ^V, S. Webb, Presidenf, etc., Grand Central Depot,, 
New York, N. Y.: 
Dear Sir : — The National Society of the Sons of the Amer- 
can Revolution have a great work before them. The country 
is drifting away from the moorings that were established by 
our patriotic fathers, and it belongs to this society to re- 
awaken the patriotic thought of the nation. The Revolution 
brought more blessings to mankind than any political move- 
ment ever before or since consummated, and this organization 
is an assurance that none of its fruits will be lost. The heroes 
and patriots who effected it are entitled to be perpetually 
honored and revered. A true American had rather trace his 
lineage to theiu than to know that the blue blood of kings 
coursed in his veins. All honor to the men who created 
liberty, and may their names be forever revered and the 
principles they established be forever perpetuated. 

Very respectfully, 

Robert L. Taylor, 

Governor. 



Philadelphia, Pa., March 15, 1890. 

My Dear Doctor : — I was extremely sorry that it was im- 
possible for me to attend the banquet given by you to ojSicers 
and members of the National Society, and of the various State 
Societies of the Sons of the American Revolution, on the 1st 
of March, because I am sure anything which advances the 
interests of the society cannot fail to be of national ad- 
vantage. 

Indeed, it seems to me especially desirable at the present 
time that we should have as often as possible recalled to our 
recollection the character, standards, virtues and the sacri- 
fices of the men who at that era conferred such lasting obli- 
gations upon mankind. There is no exaggeration in the state- 
ment that no nobler body of men were ever engaged in any 



75 

great historical struggle, or certainly the results of no other 
historical struggle are comparable with the results attained 
by the Fathers of the Republic in the times that tried men's 
souls. 

Sincerely yours, 

Wayne MacVeagh, 
Dr. W. Seward Webb, 

Grand Central Depot, 

New York City. 



Executive Department, 
State op Vermont, 
MONTPELIER, March 25th, 1890. 
Dr. W. S. Webb, President N. 8., S. A. R., Grand Central 
Depot, New York City.: 

Dear Sir : — I very much regret that I was unable to be 
present at the dinner recently given by you to gentlemen con- 
nected with the various societies of the Sons of the American 
Revolution. I am the more sorry because of the information 
which has come to me that the sentiments uttered by all the 
speakers on that occasion were in full accord with the spirit 
of true liberty which inspired the Revolutionary fathers, and 
the preservation of which is the hope of our Nation. 

If danger shall threaten the perpetuity of our institutions, 
it must arise to a great extent from a failure on the part of 
future generations to properly apprehend the value of the 
principles for which our fathers fought and a like failure to 
fully recognize the influence which the establishment of these 
principles has had, not only on their own lives, but also on 
the lives of all who have sufi'ered oppression the world over. 

If the influence of our association shall be such as to ani- 
mate the young men of our Nation with that burning love for 
freedom, that devotion to principles, and that zeal for just and 
equal laws possessed by those who achieved our independence 
and established our Government, we need fear no foe, and 
the association may well be ranked among the most valuable 
institutions organized for patriotic purposes. 



76 

The aim of our order should be to honor those to wliom we 
are indebted for our great heritage, and at the same time to 
bring forward and exhibit to all, the blessings which have 
come to the whole world through the recognition and estab- 
lishment of the principles for which they fought. 

Trusting that the work of the association may go on in 
its present channels, 

I am, with great respect, 

Very truly yours, 

W. P. Dillingham. 



New York, March 39th, 1890. 
Dear Mr. President : — You and your associates are certainly 
to be congratulated on the efforts you are making to establish 
the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution through- 
out the United States. The notable gathering of earnest men 
at your dinner on March 1st, proved how deeply thoughtful 
citizens are interested in such a movement. Tradition and 
history are the roots and strength of patriotism. I can think 
of no influence more powerful for good in preserving a health- 
ful and strong national feeling, than such an association of 
the descendants of the men who were permitted to take part 
in the Revolution that secured us national existence. It is 
certainly matter of honest pride with me that my paternal 
great grandfather carried a musket as a private soldier in the 
Revolutionary Army. 

Very truly yours, 

Stewart L. Woodford. 
Dr. William Seward Webb, 

President-General N. S., S. A. R., 
Grand Central Depot, 
New York. 



CONSTITUTION 

OF THE 

national Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. 



ARTICLE I. 

NAME. 

The name of this society shall be " Sons of the American Revolution." 
ARTICLE II. 

OBJECTS. 

The objects of this society shall be to perpetuate the memory and the 
spirit of the men who achieved American independence, by the encourage- 
ment of historical research in relation to the Revolution and the publication 
of its results, the preservation of documents and relics and of the records 
of the individual services of Revolutionary soldiers and patriots, and the 
promotion of celebrations of all patriotic anniversaries ; to carry out the 
injunction of Washington in his farewell address to the American people, 
' ' to promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general 
•diffusion of knowledge," thus developing an enlightened public opinion, and 
affording to young and old such advantages as shall develop in them the 
largest capacity for performing the duties of American citizens ; to cherish, 
maintain, and extend the institutions of American freedom, to foster true 
patriotism and love of country, and to aid in securing for mankind aU the 
blessings of liberty. 

ARTICLE III. 

MEMBERSHIP. 

Section 1. Any man is eligible for membership who is of the age of 
twenty-one years, and who is descended from an ancestor, who, with 
unfailing loyalty, rendered material aid to the cause of American Independ- 



78 

ence as a soldier or a seaman, or a civil officer in one of the several Colonies- 
or States, or as a recognized patriot, provided he shall be found worthy. 

Sec. 3. For the purpose of making more nearly perfect the records of 
our Revolutionary ancestors and their descendants, any woman of Revolu- 
tionary ancestry may file a record of her ancestor's services and her line of 
descent with the Registrar, who shall send a duplicate to the Registrar- 
General. 

Sec. 3. Any person may be eligible for honorary membership subject 
to the limitations as to age and descent estabhshed in the case of active 
members. 

Sec. 4. The National Society shall embrace all the members of the 
Societies of the Sons of the American Revolution now existing or which 
may be established under this Constitution. Such societies shall regulate- 
all matters relating to their own affairs, and judge of the qualifications of 
their members or of those proposed for membership, subject to the provis- 
ions of this Constitution. 



ARTICLE IV. 

officers. 

Section 1. The officers of the National Society shall be a President - 
General, three Honorary Vice- Presidents-General, five Vice -Presidents- 
General, a Secretary-General, Treasurer-General, Registrar-General. 
Historian-General, Surgeon-General and a Chaplain, who shall be elected 
by ballot by a vote of the majority of the members present at the 
annual meeting of the Congress of this society, and who shall hold office 
for one year and until their successors shall be elected, who, together with 
the Presidents of the State Societies, ex -officio, shall constitute a General 
Board of Managers, of which seven shall constitute a quorum. 

Sec. 2. An Executive Committee of seven, of which the President of 
the General Society shall be the Chairman, may be elected by the Board of 
Managers, which shall, in the interim between the meetings of the Board, 
transact such business as shall be delegated to it by the Board of Managers. 



ARTICLE V. 

dues. 

Each State Society shall pay annually to the Treasurer-General twenty- 
five cents for each active member thereof. All such dues shall be paid on or 
before the opening of each annual Congress of the National Society to secure 
representation therein. 



79 
ARTICLE VI. 

MEETINGS AND ELECTIONS. 

Section 1. The annual Congress for election of officers and transaction 
of business shall be held on the 30th day of April or the 1st day of May in 
•every year. 

Sec. 2. The hour and place of such meeting shall be designated by the 
Board of Managers. 

Sec. 3. Special Meetings shall be called by the President, when directed 
so to do by the Board of Managers, or whenever requested in writing so to 
do by twenty-five or more members, representing at least five State Societies, 
on giving thirty days' notice, specifying the time and place of meeting and 
the business to be transacted. 

Sec. 4. The following shall be members of all such General or Special 
Meetings : 

1. All the officers, and ex-Presidents-General, and ex-Vice-Presidents- 
General of the National Society. 

2. The President and Vice-President of each State Society. 

3. One delegate-at-large from each State Society. 

4. One delegate for every one hundred members of the Society within 
a State and for a fraction of fifty or over. 

And shall be entitled to vote therein. 

Also the following named officials who shall be Honorary Members of 
the National Society, provided they are eligible to membership in the 
Society : 

1. The President, the Vice-President, and the Chief Justice of the 
United States. 

2. The Governors of States and Territories of the Union ; the President 
of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the Secretaries of War and 
Navy of the United States. 

3. Also the Generals commanding the Army and Admirals of the 
Navy of the United States. 

Who sliall not be entitled to vote. 



ARTICLE VII. 

BY-LAWS. 

The Board of Managers shaU have authority to adopt and promulgate 
the By-Laws of the National Society, to prescribe the duties of its officers, 
to provide its seal and to designate its insigna. 



80 
ARTICLE VIII. 

AMENDMENTS. 

Amendments to this Constitution may be offered at any meeting of the 
Society, but shall not be acted on until the next meeting. A copy of 
every proposed amendment shall be sent to each member, with a notice of 
the meeting at which the same is to be acted on, at least thirty days 
prior to said meeting. A vote of two-thirds of those present shall be 
necessary to its adoption. 





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